title: Widely-pulsewidth-tunable ultrashort pulse generation from a birefringent carbon nanotube mode-locked fiber laser.
abstract: We demonstrate the generation of soliton pulses covering a nearly one order-of-magnitude pulsewidth range from a simple carbon nanotube (CNT) mode-locked fiber laser with birefringence. A polarization-maintaining-fiber-pigtailed, inline polarization beam splitter and its associated birefringence is leveraged to either enable additional nonlinear polarization evolution (NPE) mode-locking effect or result in a bandwidth-tunable Lyot filter, through adjusting the intracavity polarization settings. The large pulsewidth tuning range is achieved by exploiting both the nonlinear CNT-NPE hybrid mode-locking mechanism that narrows the pulses and the linear filtering effect that broadens them. Induced vector soliton pulses with pulsewidth from 360 fs to 3 ps can be generated, and their time-bandwidth products indicate they are close to transform-limited.
authors.forename: Ya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Jiansheng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Guoqing
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zheng