Open AccessWidely-pulsewidth-tunable ultrashort pulse generation from a birefringent carbon nanotube mode-locked fiber laser
Author(s) -
Ya Liu,
Xin Zhao,
Jiansheng Liu,
Guoqing Hu,
Zheng Gong,
Zheng Zhang
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.22.021012
Subject(s) - optics , birefringence , materials science , fiber laser , mode locking , ultrashort pulse , polarization (electrochemistry) , pulse shaping , laser , polarization maintaining optical fiber , optoelectronics , optical fiber , physics , fiber optic sensor , chemistry
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.