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Polarisation maintaining figure 8 laser

Polarisation maintaining figure 8 laser
Polarisation maintaining figure 8 laser
Passively mode-locked, erbium-doped fibre lasers have received considerable recent attention because of their ability to generate ultrashort, transform-limited soliton pulses. Figure-8, ring and linear cavity configurations have been developed based on nonlinear Sagnac and polarisation switches respectively. Pulse durations ranging from several picoseconds down effectively to the limit defined by the erbium bandwidth (~100 fs) have now been demonstrated directly at the output of such lasers. However, questions concerning the practical application of such lasers remain, particularly the question of environmental stability. The performance of passively mode-locked fibre lasers is generally critically dependant on the exact state of intracavity birefringence and this is sensitive to temperature, pressure and mechanical perturbation. The cleanest way to avoid the problem is to construct a laser system using polarisation-maintaining (PM) components and to operate the system on a single polarisation eigen-mode. A linear cavity PM erbium fibre laser employing bulk elements and a saturable absorber has recently been demonstrated. In this letter we report for the first time the performance of a self-starting, all-fibre, PM Figure-8 laser capable of generating high quality, transform-limited soliton pulses and exhibiting excellent environmental stability.
Taverner, D.
b8f04b32-4ce1-4d7d-9fd2-298bff142b96
Richardson, D.J.
ebfe1ff9-d0c2-4e52-b7ae-c1b13bccdef3
Payne, D.N.
4f592b24-707f-456e-b2c6-8a6f750e296d
Taverner, D.
b8f04b32-4ce1-4d7d-9fd2-298bff142b96
Richardson, D.J.
ebfe1ff9-d0c2-4e52-b7ae-c1b13bccdef3
Payne, D.N.
4f592b24-707f-456e-b2c6-8a6f750e296d

Taverner, D., Richardson, D.J. and Payne, D.N. (1993) Polarisation maintaining figure 8 laser. Third Topical Meeting on Non-Linear Guided-Wave Phenomena, Cambridge, United Kingdom. 19 - 22 Sep 1993.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Passively mode-locked, erbium-doped fibre lasers have received considerable recent attention because of their ability to generate ultrashort, transform-limited soliton pulses. Figure-8, ring and linear cavity configurations have been developed based on nonlinear Sagnac and polarisation switches respectively. Pulse durations ranging from several picoseconds down effectively to the limit defined by the erbium bandwidth (~100 fs) have now been demonstrated directly at the output of such lasers. However, questions concerning the practical application of such lasers remain, particularly the question of environmental stability. The performance of passively mode-locked fibre lasers is generally critically dependant on the exact state of intracavity birefringence and this is sensitive to temperature, pressure and mechanical perturbation. The cleanest way to avoid the problem is to construct a laser system using polarisation-maintaining (PM) components and to operate the system on a single polarisation eigen-mode. A linear cavity PM erbium fibre laser employing bulk elements and a saturable absorber has recently been demonstrated. In this letter we report for the first time the performance of a self-starting, all-fibre, PM Figure-8 laser capable of generating high quality, transform-limited soliton pulses and exhibiting excellent environmental stability.

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Published date: 1993
Venue - Dates: Third Topical Meeting on Non-Linear Guided-Wave Phenomena, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1993-09-19 - 1993-09-22

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 77235
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/77235
PURE UUID: 2fe4acab-94b9-4489-a4fd-4b018114e0e8
ORCID for D.J. Richardson: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7751-1058

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 11 Mar 2010
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:34

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Contributors

Author: D. Taverner
Author: D.J. Richardson ORCID iD
Author: D.N. Payne

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