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In this paper, generation of soliton molecules by a self-mode-locked Er/Yb double clad fiber laser is experimentally demonstrated. The optical spectrum of the bound solitons exhibits eight well defined peaks at ∼1563 nm with high modulation depth. The corresponding autocorrelation measurement shows a fundamental trace with several narrow peaks, suggesting the presence of bound solitons. The obtained results demonstrate the reliability of our simple laser configuration for the formation of more robust soliton molecules as the pump power is increased. The soliton molecules exhibit repetition rate of 19.54 MHz and average power of 1.2 W, achieved with a pump power of ∼4.8 W.

A simple method for the estimation of the wavelength of a fiber laser system is proposed. The method is based on the use of a high-birefringence-fiber loop mirror (HBFLM). The HBFLM exhibits a periodic transmission/reflection spectrum whose spectral characteristics are determined by the length and temperature of the high-birefringence fiber (HBF). Then, by the previous characterization of the HBFLM spectral transmission response, the central wavelength of the generated laser line can be estimated. By using a photodetector, the wavelength of the laser line is estimated during an HBF temperature scanning by measuring the temperature at which the maximum transmitted power of the HBFLM is reached. The proposed method is demonstrated in a linear cavity tunable Er/Yb fiber laser. This method is a reliable and low-cost alternative for laser wavelength determination in short wavelength ranges without the use of specialized and expensive equipment.

In this work, we present the numerical and experimental investigation of the polarization dynamics in a free birefringence mode-locked fiber laser. The laser includes a double-pass Erbium-doped fiber amplifier and 20-m long bi-twisted fiber at a twist rate of ± 6 turns m−1 to mitigate both, linear and circular birefringence effects. We found ellipticity changes due to nonlinear birefringence in the 20-m long fiber during pulse formation and propagation. In contrast with previously reported works, the inclusion of bi-twisted fiber allows investigate the nonlinear effects independently from the linear ones. The experimental behavior was confirmed by numerical simulations based on split step Fourier method showing that the polarization changes are generated since the vector soliton formation process.

We propose to use the fast Fourier transformation (FFT) to analyze the spectral data of passively mode-locked fiber lasers, with the purpose of characterizing and classifying the different pulsed regimes arising in these lasers. The results show temporal information at the sub-ps scale. Specially, in the Fourier domain, the spectra of bound solitons depict several solitons with relative phases of π/2 and close to 0, distributed into a window that extends beyond the limited span of the autocorrelator. Besides, the FFT amplitude traces can help to classify the multi-pulse regimes generated by the laser; in particular, the exponential decay of intensity in such amplitude traces can be a fingerprint of noise-like pulses. Furthermore, the amplitude traces show some modulation that we attribute to Kelly’s sidebands. The proposed technique allows examining spectra from a mode-locked fiber laser independently of the active medium or laser cavity configuration without the need to use ultrafast photo- detectors.

We report a passive mode-locked fiber laser (PMLFL) in a novel configuration to generate a single soliton with ultra-low repetition rate. The configuration includes a Faraday mirror after the first half of the cavity length to counteract the nonlinear polarization rotation effects. The total cavity length is 428 m including a 400-m SMF-28 fiber which was twisted to cancel the linear birefringence. The strict polarization control establishes a relation between the regimes of generation and the polarization state of the pulses propagating in the cavity. By properly adjusting the initial polarization state, we observed three different emission regimes, the single soliton regime (SR), conventional noise-like pulses (NLP) and noise-like square-waveform pulse (NLSWP). In the SR, we obtain a 2.9 ps pulse duration centered at 1558.7 nm with a 467.2 kHz repetition rate.

Supercontinuum generated directly from an Erbium/Ytterbium fiber amplifier and their dependence on pump power has been experimentally reported. Waveforms of pulses remain unchanged in contrast with respective spectra from 0.1 to 12 W pump power.

In the present work we demonstrate a novel single-soliton ultra-low pulse repetition frequency passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser. We mitigate the residual linear birefringence of fiber by fiber twist to achieve a strict control of polarization. For mode-locking the nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) was used. Special technique was applied to reduce the overdriving of NPR that allows the generation of single soliton in ultra-long cavity. The strict control of polarization yields a stable relation between the polarization state of the pulses propagating in the cavity and the regimes of generation. A 192.12-kHz train of soliton pulses was obtained with pulse duration of 4.7 ps at 1560.1 nm, the average power was 29 μW and the estimated peak power was 30.8 W with an energy of 150.9 pJ.

A passively Q-switched thulium-doped fiber laser using isopropyl alcohol as a saturable absorber is experimentally demonstrated. The absorber was made of two FC/PC connectors matched into a cannula with the gap between them filled by isopropyl alcohol. The alcohol-based saturable absorber incorporated into a ring cavity thulium-doped fiber laser leads to passive Q-switching laser operation at the wavelength of $1.88~\mu \text{m}$ . With the maximum pump power of 1.42 W, passive Q-switched pulses with a minimum duration of $1.46~\mu \text{s}$ , maximum repetition rate of 66.7 kHz, and pulse energy of $0.93~\mu \text{J}$ were obtained.

We experimentally demonstrate dissipative soliton resonance effect in a 173-m long passively mode-locked figure-eight thulium doped fiber laser with a net anomalous dispersion. The duration of the wave-breaking-free pulse broadens with the increase of a pump power. At maximum pump power of 4.5 W, square pulses were generated with duration of 85.18 ns, average output power of 245 mW, pulse energy of 206 nJ, and repetition rate of 1.19 MHz.

The experimental demonstration of a gain-switched pulsed fiber laser with low repetition rate emission in the 2 µm wavelength region is presented. The laser cavity is based on the figure-9 shape, where the gain-switched operation of the laser is obtained by using a double-clad Tm-doped fiber (DCTDF) as gain medium and a commercial pulsed laser diode at 793-nm with configurable parameters as pump source. The pulse parameters of the pump source are optimized for efficient suppressing of unstable gain-switched laser oscillations. As a result, laser pulses with low repetition rate in a range from 10 to 20 kHz with laser emission at the wavelength of 1951 nm are obtained. The generated gain-switched pulses exhibit maximum duration and energy of 0.5 and 3.5 µJ, respectively. The delay time between the pump pulses and the gain-switched pulses is of ~ 0.5 µs.

We present the experimental investigation of a dual-wavelength passively mode-locked Er-doped fiber laser with strict polarization control. The configuration includes a double-pass amplifier with a Faraday mirror and twisted fiber. We observe that including double-twist fiber cancels circular and linear birefringence and allows obtaining dual-wavelength emission varying the losses in the cavity. In contrast, results including single-twist fiber which only emits single-wavelength due to large circular birefringence.

In this work, we present the spectral polarization properties of a fiber optic loop mirror (FOLM) which includes a 50/50 coupler and 25-cm long highly birefringent (hi-bi) fiber. The modulation depth of the reflection/transmission spectra can be adjusted by twisting the hi-bi fiber at the splices by means of two azimuth rotators (AR). The results show that the polarization properties of the reflection strongly depends on the angle rotation. We found that it is possible to obtain reflection spectral polarization independence for any modulation depth with the proper parameters. The experimental behavior was confirmed by numerical simulations based on the Jones matrix formulation.

A tunable dual-wavelength thulium doped fiber laser is demonstrated experimentally. For the first time for the 2- $\mu \text{m}$ wavelength band we propose the independent tuning of the generated laser lines based on fiber Bragg gratings and the use of a Hi-Bi fiber optic loop mirror for the fine adjustment of the cavity losses to obtain stable dual-wavelength operation. Dual-wavelength laser generation with the laser lines separation in the range from 0.3 to 6.5 nm is obtained. The laser emission exhibits an optical signal-to-noise ratio better than 56 dB. Improved stability with output power fluctuations less than 1 dB is observed in dual-wavelength generation with equal power of lines.

We present the Gain-switching laser operation with a Tm-doped fiber generating pulses at 1.86-µm, pumped by a passive Q-switched fiber laser where both lasers are generated simultaneously in the same linear cavity resonator.

We report the experimental investigation of a dual-wavelength passively mode-locked fiber laser (PMLFL) with double-twist fiber to cancel both, circular and linear birefringence. To obtain dual-wavelength emission, we vary the losses inside the cavity.

We present a simple and efficient experimental approach to synchronized dual-wavelength pulsed operation in an all-fiber laser. Four different dual-wavelength emissions of synchronized picosecond pulses are generated through simple adjustments of a wave retarder. Autocorrelation traces exhibit modulation profiles corresponding to dual-wavelength emissions with wavelength separations ranging over one order of magnitude, from 0.96 to 9 nm. In all cases, it is observed stable dual-wavelength operation and perfect synchronization between both pulsed components, without requiring of intra-cavity dispersion management. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, synchronous tunable dual-wavelength pulse emission in a single-cavity Er/Yb double clad ring fiber laser is experimentally demonstrated.

In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate generation of diverse structures of robust optical pulses obtained with a ring cavity passively mode-locked fiber laser based on a double-clad erbium-ytterbium doped fiber, and operating at net-anomalous cavity dispersion. A half-wave and a quarter-wave retarder plates allow adjustable saturable absorbing action by the nonlinear polarization rotation technique. Pulsed laser operation in quasi- continuous wave, molecules of solitons, and single-wavelength noise-like pulses (NLPs) regimes is obtained by properly adjusting the wave retarders. In the soliton and NLPs operating regimes, the central laser wavelength lies in the 1540 nm region. The obtained NLPs exhibit narrow peak coherence of ∼231 fs.

In this work we present a simple polarization-maintaining wavelength-tunable passive mode-locked Erbium-doped fiber laser with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as a mode locker. The cavity includes a Sagnac interferometer-based fiber optical loop mirror (FOLM) as a wide wavelength-tunable filter. Tunable mode-locking was experimentally achieved in the range of 1543.2 nm to 1569.5 nm by thermally adjustment of FOLM wavelength reflection. The output pulses have a repetition rate of 11.16 MHz with pulse duration about 0.9 ps. The experimental results were confirmed by numerical simulations.

Supercontinuum (SC) generation directly from noise-like pulse (NLP) emission is demonstrated in a mode-locked thulium-doped all-fiber laser with nonlinear polarization rotation. The laser supports NLP emission at a repetition rate of 812.79 kHz, producing optical pulses of 2 ns pulse duration and 400 nm of optical bandwidth, which expands from 1800 nm to 2200 nm at floor level and covers the entire thulium band. The SC source presents a high dynamic range, higher than 50 dB, a high degree of spectral flatness, without significant spectral variations or pump remnants, and an output average power of 20.25 mW. Moreover, our proposal avoids the inclusion of external components and devices, thus preserving the robustness and simplicity in a single all-fiber system.

We report an experimental study of switchable rectangular pulses generation in a passively mode-locked double-clad thulium-doped fiber laser operating in the anomalous dispersion regime. A fiber loop mirror and a polarization imbalanced nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) forms the linear cavity. The loop in the NOLM includes a quarter-wave retarder, which allows switching between two regimes of rectangular pulse generation. The laser generates rectangular noise-like pulses (NLPs) or dissipative soliton resonance (DSR) pulses with 1.18 MHz repetition rate at ∼1990 nm. At the maximum pump power of 10 W, rectangular pulses with energy of up to 540 nJ in DSR operation and 482 nJ in NLP operation were obtained with output average power of 640 mW and 571 mW, respectively.

This paper presents the experimental results obtained in the development of novel optical fiber lasers architectures operating in continuous-wave and pulsed regimes. The first laser shown is an actively Q-switched operating at 1565 nm with a double-clad fiber doped with Er 3+ /Yb 3+ , pulse widths in the order of hundreds of ns, repetition rate from 200 kHz to 310 kHz, and average power up to 2.5 W. The second architecture is a passive mode-locked laser with higher harmonics generation. Output characteristics are; center wavelengths 1563 nm, noise-like pulses with durations around 80 ns, harmonics evolution up to the order 1270, and repetition rates to 259 MHz. The results presented seek to provide a comparison between two types of optical fiber lasers of great technological interest.

In the present work, we investigated the polarization-imbalanced non-linear optical loop mirror (NOLM) for compressing the soliton spectrum as well as removing the sidebands. In the passive mode-locked soliton fiber laser, the spectra of solitons are usually accompanied with dispersive waves that can form spectral sidebands. The sidebands are the result of a constructive interference between the soliton and dispersive waves that take place at frequencies in which the phase difference is 2π. These sidebands may contain a significant part of the energy of the output spectrum, it is important first clean the spectrum by removing the sidebands and then compress the spectrum to have an optimal soliton profile. Our NOLM consists of a nearly symmetrical coupler with a 51/49 coupling ratio, and a fiber loop which consists of two 50-m pieces of SMF-28 fibers twisted in opposite directions. The maximum transmission of the NOLM at high power was 34%. At the NOLM output we reached a spectral compression of more than 50% for different values of input power. Although the sidebands around 1555 nm and 1570 nm were totally cleaned, nearly 5% of the sidebands were remaining around 1560 nm and 1567 nm. In order to get stronger spectral compression, the signal at the NOLM output was first amplified then sent into 1 km of SMF-28. For minimum input power the full width at half maximum (FWHM) bandwidth of the spectrum decreased from 5.5 nm to 0.67 nm. For higher input power the FWHM decreased from 4.23 nm to 0.59 nm.

We experimentally demonstrate simultaneous Tm

We report a study of an all-fiber Tm-doped fiber laser with tunable single wavelength emission and dual-wavelength generation operating in different laser wavelength ranges depending on the Tm-doped fiber (TDF) length. The wavelength selection and tuning for single wavelength laser operation and the adjustment of cavity losses for dual wavelength laser operation is obtained by temperature variations of the high birefringence fiber loop in a fiber optical loop mirror. Stable dual wavelength operation is achieved at the single wavelength tuning limits when cavity losses are balanced to generate two simultaneous laser lines with equal powers. A linear cavity fiber laser setup with TDF lengths of 2, 4, 8 and 12 m is used to obtain tunable single wavelength operation in a range of ~40 nm for each TDF length. A total tuning range of ~110 nm with the four different TDF lengths is achieved. At dual-wavelength laser operation the wavelength separation was ~48 nm. The maximal power efficiency of ~34.9% with a maximum output power of 274 mW was obtained with the use of TDF length of 4 m.

We report the dynamics of multi-pulse in a ring cavity passively mode-locked fiber laser with a strict control of the polarization state. We study the relation between the polarization state of the pulses propagating in the cavity and the regimes of generation. We have found that small ellipticities, the laser generates one bunch of pulses in the cavity, while at higher ellipticities the laser generates multiple bunches. At constant ellipticity we rotated the polarization azimuth and observed a regime transition from the generation of a bunch of solitons to that of noise-like pulses (NLP).

We report an in-fiber structure based on the use of a multimode fiber segment and a double cladding fiber segment, and its application as spectral filter in an erbium-doped fiber laser for selection and tuning of the laser line wavelength. The output transmission of the proposed device exhibit spectrum modulation of the input signal with free spectral range of ~21 nm and maximum visibility enhanced to more than ~20 dB. The output spectrum of the in-fiber filter is wavelength displaced by bending application which allows a wavelength tuning of the generated laser line in a range of ~12 nm. The use of the proposed in-fiber structure is demonstrated as a reliable, simple, and low-cost wavelength filter for tunable fiber lasers design and optical instrumentation applications.

In this paper, a double-clad Er/Yb fiber laser with self-Q-switched and continuous wave operation depending on the pump power range is experimentally demonstrated. The linear cavity is formed on one side by a pair of cascaded tunable fiber Bragg gratings used for the selection and tuning of the generated laser lines. On the opposite side, a fiber optical loop mirror with high birefringence fiber in the loop is used to adjust the intra-cavity losses to obtain dual-wavelength emission by temperature changes on the fiber loop. Continuous wave dual-wavelength laser operation is obtained for tunable separation of the generated laser lines in a range from 1 to 7 nm, maximum output power of 3.6Wwith a pump power of 10Wand laser wavelengths linewidth of ~0.2 nm. Self-Q-switched laser pulses are obtained with low pump power in a range from 322 to 890 mW. Q-switched pulses with minimum pulse duration of ~1.5 _s and maximum pulse energy of ~3.5 _J are obtained.

We propose and study analytically and numerically a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror scheme for multilevel amplitude regeneration, whose operation relies on the manipulation of light polarization. Polarization control increases the number of degrees of freedom of the setup, making it easier to meet the demanding requirements for regenerating complex modulation formats. By adjusting one of those additional parameters, namely, the ellipticity of input polarization, if all the other ones are properly set and fixed, the transfer characteristic is shaped for optimal two-level amplitude regeneration for two different state power ratios. The cascadability of the proposed scheme is demonstrated for the optical star-8 quadrature amplitude modulation format as an example.

The generation of clean solitons is important for a number of applications such as optical analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) based on soliton self-frequency shift. In real sources the quality of the pulses is deteriorated by dispersive waves, continuous wave (CW), amplified spontaneous emission (ASE). The dispersive waves appear in the spectral profile as side-lobe components that would limit the resolution of ADC. Spectral compression techniques cause the appearance of a pedestal on the spectrum. All of these imperfections of pulses have to be eliminated to improve the performance of alloptical systems. The nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) is a good candidate for these tasks. In the present work we report the implementation of a polarization-imbalanced NOLM for soliton cleaning. The NOLM consists of a nearly symmetrical coupler with a 51/49 coupling ratio, 100 m of twisted OFS Truewave fiber whose dispersion value is 9 ps/nm/km at 1550 nm, and a tunable in-line fiber polarization controller (PC) asymmetrically inserted inside the loop. The use of the nearly symmetrical coupler allows very low transmission for low power components of radiation. At the same time adjustment of the PC allows the adjustment of the nonlinear characteristic to have a maximum transmission for solitons with different durations. We used two sources of pulses, SESAM based and a ring fiber laser. At the appropriate adjustment of PC, we obtained a rejection of ASE by 220 times, rejection of the dispersion waves and the pedestal by more than 200 times. The maximum transmission reached 70%.

We report a linear cavity all-fiber Thulium-doped fiber (TDF) laser with tunable narrow linewidth operating near to 2 μm of wavelength. The TDF is pumped with a laser source at 1567 nm. The cavity is delimited by two fiber optical loop mirrors (FOLM) with high birefringence fiber in the loop (Hi-Bi FOLM) with different periodical wavelength-dependent reflection periods. The wavelength tuning range for the generated laser line of ~44.3 nm depends on the Hi-Bi FOLM with long wavelength period of 54.4 nm. The generated laser spectral width, less than 0.05 nm, is determined by the Hi- Bi FOLM with narrow-band wavelength period of 1 nm. Discrete wavelength tuning is achieved by wavelength reflection displacement of the narrow-band Hi-Bi FOLM by temperature variation on the high birefringence fiber loop. The temperature changes are performed with a temperature electronic controller/meter with resolution of 0.06°C in a temperature range from 22.87 to 49.12°C. Dual-wavelength generation with a wavelengths separation of ~47 nm is also obtained at the single wavelength tuning limits.

A tunable dual-wavelength lineal cavity Tm-doped fiber laser is presented. The generation of the laser lines is based on the use of cascaded fiber Bragg gratings and a Hi-Bi fiber optic loop mirror.

We report the experimental study of multi-pulse dynamics in a passively mode locked-fiber laser with total control of polarization finding the condition to generate reproducible noise-like pulse, soliton molecules, bound solitons and single soliton.

We report the experimental investigation of an all-fiber multi-wavelength passively Q-switched Er/Yb laser with simultaneous gain-switched pulsed operation by using a thulium-doped fiber as a saturable absorber. Laser emission is obtained in three wavelength regions with central peaks at around 1546 nm, 1561 nm, and 1862 nm. Multi-wavelength emission with separation of approximately 1 nm is obtained around the wavelength regions of 1546 nm and 1561 nm. Stable laser pulses are generated in the pump power range from 3.6 W to 7.3 W.

We report an experimental study of passive harmonic mode-locking in an all-fiber switchable dual-wavelength Er/Yb double-clad laser. The proposed scheme supports single- and dual-wavelength operation of mode-locked pulses with rectangular, h-like and trapezoidal shapes in a noise-like pulse regime. Single-wavelength emissions at λ1 = 1545.1 and λ2 = 1563.6 nm were obtained for pump power values of 9.42 and 6.31 W, achieving pulse durations of up to 18 and 11.8 ns, respectively. At an intermediary pump power of 7.5 W, dual-wavelength emission is obtained and pulses of around 3.59 ns are generated. Additionally, the transition dynamics until 4th-order harmonic mode-locking is also observed. Different laser operation regimes of fundamental and different orders of harmonic mode-locking, with rectangular, h-shaped or trapezoidal shaped pulses are obtained with the same laser configuration with simple and well-defined plates and pump power adjustments.

Dual wavelength laser generation has been of constant interest due to their applications in optical communications and teraheartz generation. A novel configuration for Dual-wavelength laser generation based on the use of a couple of multimode interference (MMI) filters is demonstrated in a ring cavity Erbium-doped fibre laser. The MMI filters consist of a segment of no-core fibre spliced between two SMF-28 single mode fibre segments. The MMI filters configured as a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, are used as transmission spectral filters for simultaneous generation of two laser wavelengths. An optical attenuator is used to adjust the intra-cavity losses for dual-wavelength laser generation. Laser emission at 1540.4 and 1554 nm for a wavelength separation of ~13.6 nm is obtained. The laser wavelengths output power stability variations with the applied pump power is also experimentally discussed. The use of MMI filters in the proposed dual-wavelength laser filter is experimentally demonstrated as a reliable device for dual-wavelength generation in fibre lasers.

Nonlinear polarization dynamics of single and paired pulses in twisted fibers is experimentally and numerically studied. Accompanying a dramatic difference in the output spectrum when a single- or double-amplified soliton pulse is launched in the fiber, the output polarization for the two cases also reveals very different characteristics.

A brief explanation on Q-switched fiber laser operating principle for active technique in terms of operation characteristics is presented. Experimental analysis of proposed pulsed fiber lasers by the active Q-switched technique is demonstrated. Experimental setups in‐ clude the use of Er/Yb doped fiber as a gain medium and an acousto-optic modulator as cavity elements. Setup variations include the use of fiber Bragg gratings for wavelength selection and tuning and Sagnac interferometer for wavelength selection in single wave‐ length operation and for cavity loss adjustment in dual wavelength operation. The exper‐ imental analysis of principal characteristics of single-wavelength operation of the fiber laser and cavity loss adjustment method for dual-wavelength laser operation are dis‐ cussed.