Manipulation of operation states by polarization control in an erbium-doped fiber laser with a hybrid saturable absorber.
We propose an operation switchable ring-cavity erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) via intra-cavity polarization control. By using a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror in the EDFL cavity, stable Q-switching, Q-switched mode-locking, continuous-wave mode-locking, pulse splitting, and harmonic mode-locking pulses can be manipulated simply by detuning a polarization controller while keeping the pump power at the same level. All EDFL operation states can be obtained under the polarization angles detuning within 180 degrees. Continuous-wave mode-locking of EDFL with 800-fs pulsewidth repeated at 4 MHz has been obtained, for which the output pulse energy is 0.5 nJ and the peak power is 625 W. Interaction between solitons and the accompanied non-soliton component will lead to either pulse splitting or 5th-order harmonic mode-locking at repetition rate of 20 MHz.
Lin
Kuei-Huei
KH
Department of Science, Taipei Municipal University of Education 1, Ai-Kuo West Rd., Taipei 100, Taiwan.
Kang
Jung-Jui
JJ
Wu
Hsiao-Hua
HH
Lee
Chao-Kuei
CK
Lin
Gong-Ru
GR