Broadband spectrum generation with compact Yb-doped
fiber laser by intra-cavity cascaded Raman scattering
Zikai Dong (董自凯), Yanrong Song (宋晏蓉)*, Runqin Xu (徐润亲), Yu Zheng (郑 煜),
Jinrong Tian (田金荣), and Kexuan Li (李克轩)
College of Applied Sciences, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, PR China
*Corresponding author: yrsong@bjut.edu.cn
Received December 1, 2016; accepted April 14, 2017; posted online May 10, 2017
We experimentally demonstrate a cascaded Raman scattering continuum, utilizing a compact mode-locked
Yb-doped fiber laser based on a nonlinear polarization rotation technique in the all normal dispersion regime.
There is no physical filter or polarization controller in the oscillator, and a different mode-locked operation is
achieved, corresponding to the extra fiber location in the oscillator. The broadband spectrum generation owes to
the enhanced stimulated Raman scattering progress. The maximum output average power and peak power are
14.75 nJ and 18.0 W, and the short coherence light is suited for optical coherence tomography.
OCIS codes: 140.3510, 140.3550, 140.4050, 070.4340.
doi: 10.3788/COL201715.071408.
The nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) technique has
become one of the main techniques to achieve mode-locked
fiber lasers for its compactness, implementation, and low
cost
[1]
. NPR mode-locked fiber lasers operating in the all
normal dispersion (ANDi) regime
[2]
have been widely in-
vestigated for their high pulse energy
[3–6]
. Typical ANDi
mode-locked fiber lasers include a spectral filter and a
polarization controller, which play crucial roles to balance
intra-cavity dispersion and nonlinear effects
[7]
. Chirped
pulses are generated with the interaction between non lin-
ear phase accumulation and spectral filtering in the ANDi
regime
[8]
. References [9,10] revealed that a physical intra-
cavity bandpass filter was not crucial for the generation of
the chirped pulses. Reference [
11] reported that a self-
pulse was generated without polarization controlling
devices, and the fiber laser utilized the active fiber reab-
sorption effect as a saturable absorber for mode locking.
Moreover, a self-started unidirectional dissipative soliton
(DS) was generated in Yb-doped fiber (YDF) lasers with-
out an isolator based on the NPR technique due to the
cavity directional nonlinearity asymmetry
[12]
. The above
results show the possibility to realize a more compact
and low-cost fiber laser by utilizing a simplified NPR
technology.
Broadband spectrum generation at 1.0–1.2 μm has
gained much attention for applications in gas sensing, op-
tical communication systems, and wavelength tunable
and optical coherence tomography (OCT). An alternative
way to generate a broadband spectrum is by using noise-
like pulse (NLP) emission in an optical fiber ring cavity.
Reference [
13] reported that the NLP with a spectrum
bandwidth of up to 131 nm (FWHM) was obtained in
a YDF laser. Raman scattering generated broadband
spectrum in optical fiber lasers has also been widely inves-
tigated
[14–17]
. In most experiments, multi-order Raman
scattering generation is realized in an extra-cavity con-
figuration, in which a long fiber is used to reduce the
pump power threshold of stimulated Raman scattering
(SRS)
[18,19]
and provide enough gain for cascaded SRS gen-
eration
[20–23]
. In recent years, photonic crystal fibers
(PCFs) are also utilized for higher nonlinear gain
[24–27]
.
However, the extra-cavity configuration needs high peak
power or high pulse energy to pump the fiber. Because the
peak power and pulse energy inside the laser cavity are
high, the intra-cavity configuration for multi-order
Raman scattering generation is simpler
[23]
.
In this Letter, there are no physical filters and polariza-
tion controllers in the laser cavity. A mode-locked pulse
train is achieved in the ANDi regime based on the NPR
technique. The fiber birefringence-induced filtering effect
(FBFE) is the main reason for mode locking in our laser
setup. The extra 20 m long single mode fiber (SMF) is
inserted in two different positions, where the DS operation
and NLP operation are achieved correspondingly. The
nonlinear effect is obviously enhanced in the NLP regime,
and broadband spectrum generation is owed to the en-
hanced SRS progress. The maximum output average
power and peak power are 14.75 nJ and 18.0 W, so the
laser is an ideal source for OCT.
The experimental setup of a simplified Yb-doped mode-
locked fiber laser is shown in Fig.
1. There is no physical
filter and polarization controller in it. The pump source is
a 976 nm single mode laser diode (LD) with the maximum
output power of 600 mW, which core-pumped the gain
fiber through a filter wavelength division multiplexer
(FWDM) with a central wavelength of 1030 nm. The
polarization-independent isolator (PI-ISO) is inserted to
force the laser to operate unidirectionally. The gain fiber
is a 23 cm long YDF with the absorption coefficient of
1200 dB/m at 976 nm. A length of 24.5 m passive SMF
is used to increase the nonlinear effect and induce a large
dispersion. The polarization beam splitter (PBS) converts
NPR into amplitude modulation and serves as the output
coupler to couple the portion of the pulse out of the cavity.
COL 15(7), 071408(2017) CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS July 10, 2017
1671-7694/2017/071408(4) 071408-1 © 2017 Chinese Optics Letters