Noise fiber lasers

In this paper, we present a brief review of the noise operation mode of fiber lasers. These lasers were studied recently by a collaborative group that includes researchers, professors, and Ph.D. students from the Centro de Investigaciones en Óptica, A.C. (Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico) and from the Universidad de Valencia (Valencia, Spain). Meanwhile, the pioneer works in this topic important for understanding the physics behind fiber lasers’ operation and for practical applications were done with the active participation of Dr. Evgeny Kuzin from the Instituto Nacional de Astrof́ ısica,Óptica y Electŕ onica (Puebla, Ḿexico) and Dr. Georgina Beltr án-Ṕerez from the Beneḿ erita Universidad Aut́ onoma de Puebla (Puebla, Mexico), whose Ph.D. study was supervised by him. The fiber lasers under study were based on commercial erbiumand ytterbium-doped fibers as gain media and operated in continuous-wave and actively Q-switched regimes. All these fiber lasers were arranged in Fabry-Perot cavity configuration with fiber Bragg gratings as narrow-band reflectors. In the case of actively Q-switched lasers, a standard fiberized acousto-optic modulator was placed close to the rear (100 %) reflector. The most important conclusion of all the works grounding the present review is that, independently of laser operation regime, continuous wave, or actively Q-switched, these fiber lasers operate in the extreme noise regime with the photon statistics described by Bose-Einstein distribution inherent to narrow-band thermal light sources.