title: Harmonic mode locking by synchronous optical pumping of a saturable absorber with the residual pump.
abstract: An actively mode-locked fiber laser is demonstrated, for the first time to our knowledge, by modulation of a saturable-absorber mirror with the light used simultaneously for pumping the gain fiber. Stabilization of a harmonically passive mode-locked fiber laser that generates soliton pulses of 550-fs duration is obtained with this technique. The results indicate a reduction of supermode suppression by more than 55 dB. The timing jitter is improved by 9 dB.
authors.affiliation: Optoelectronics Research Centre, Tampere University of Technology, P.O. Box 692, FIN-33101, Tampere, Finland. mircea.guina@orc.tut.fi
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guina
authors.forename: O G
authors.initials: OG
authors.lastname: Okhotnikov