Study on vector soliton formation in fiber lasers

• Main Author: Hu, Xiao
• Other Authors: Tang Dingyuan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/74642
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Fiber lasers are the lasers that use the rare-earth doped optical fibers as their gain media Nowadays, the research and development on fiber lasers have attracted a lot of interest, as compared with other types of lasers, such as solid state lasers, fiber lasers have a number of advantages. Firstly, due to that in a fiber laser light is confined in the fiber core, fiber laser can ensure a good laser beam quality; Secondly, as the gain medium is a fiber, light can propagate in it for a long distance, fiber lasers can have very high gain. High power continue wave (CW) fiber lasers are developed and widely used in the industrial manufacturing and material processing, scientific researches. A soliton is a localized nonlinear wave formed in various physical systems. In nonlinear optics, temporal soliton formation in single mode fibers (SMFs) has attracted great interest. Optical solitons are formed in SMFs as a result of the natural balance between the fiber dispersion and self-phase modulation of light. Such a soliton can propagate long distance in a SMF and maintain its pulse shape. Therefore, the solitons have potential practical applications in the long-haul optical telecommunications systems and optical signal processing. In this final year project, different types of soliton formation in fiber lasers will be investigated theoretically and practically, aiming at a better understanding on the process of vector solitons formation in fiber lasers and the soliton pulse propagation in a laser cavity. Special attention has been paid on the effect of birefringence of the optical fibers on the soliton formation and dynamics. This paper will describe the soliton pulse propagation in fiber laser cavity, affecting by the dispersion and nonlinear effects the soliton has the energy change and self-shaping phenomenon will also be discussed via the MATLAB simulation program.