Optics & Laser Technology 48 (2013) 6771

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Optics & Laser Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optlastec

Diverse output states from an all-normal dispersion ytterbium-doped ber laser: Q-switch, dissipative soliton resonance, and noise-like pulse
Z.W. Xu, Z.X. Zhang n
College of Physics & Communication Electronics, Key Lab of Photoelectron and Communications of Jiangxi Province, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 21 August 2012 Received in revised form 18 September 2012 Accepted 20 September 2012 Keywords: Ytterbium-doped ber laser Dissipative soliton resonance Noise-like pulses

abstract
An all-normal-dispersion ytterbium-doped ber ring laser has been demonstrated, with different operation regimes: Q-switch, CW mode-locking and noise-like pulses, depending on the pump power and suitable orientation of the polarization controllers. As a transition between Q-switch and CW mode-locking, Q-switched mode-locking has also been observed. Moreover, our experiment shows that the CW mode-locking operation is the result of dissipative soliton resonance in the all-normaldispersion ber laser without external lter, which is a new way to generate high-energy pulses. This ber laser with diverse outputs has many potential applications, and is helpful to investigate laser dynamics. & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Passively mode-locked ber lasers based on nonlinear polarization rotation have been widely investigated, due to their simple and compact congurations, as well as potential applications in optical communications and signal processing. Since the rst report on the passively mode-locked erbium-doped ber lasers based on nonlinear polarization rotation in 1990, great progress has been made over the past two decades. From the perspective of cavity conguration, in addition to the dispersionmanagement ber laser [1], all-normal-dispersion ber laser and ber laser with large net-normal dispersion have been developed [2,3], generating the so-called dissipative solitons [4,5]. On the other hand, from the perspective of output state, many different pulse states, such as Q-switched pulse [6], conservative soliton, stretched pulse, dissipative soliton, noise-like pulse [7], and similariton [8], have been reported. Especially, even from a same ber laser there are several distinct output states depending on pump power and polarization [9]. Gong et al. summarized the existence of these output states: normal soliton, bound-solitons and noise-like pulse in one given erbium-doped ber laser [10,11]. However, their research object was dispersionmanagement ber lasers. Hideur et al. demonstrated mode-lock, Q-switch and CW operation of an ytterbium-doped double-clad ber ring laser [12]. However, the novel state of dissipative soliton resonance was not included. Dissipative soliton resonance has been considered as an approach to boost the pulse energy to

a higher level [1315]. Dissipative solitons with steep spectral edges can be attained from all-normal-dispersion ber lasers by introducing spectrum lter or utilizing inherent ltering effect inside the laser cavities [1618]. The spectral ltering effect can balance the strong self-amplitude modulation in the all-normaldispersion lasers, resulting in mode-locking of highly chirped pulses with unprecedented energies. However, the used spectrum lter inevitably restricts the increase of pulse energy. It is worthwhile to investigate whether dissipative soliton resonance can be achieved in all-normal-dispersion ber laser without spectrum lter, and pulse dynamics in this case. In this paper, we have experimentally obtained different output states from an all-normal-dispersion ber lasers without spectrum lter. According to the experimental results, depending on pump power and polarization the proposed laser can operate in diverse states: Q-switch, dissipative soliton resonance, and noise-like pulse. As a transition between Q-switching and CW mode-locking, Q-switched mode-locking has also been observed. This work could help to understand the dynamics of the allnormal-dispersion ber laser without spectrum lter. Additionally, dissipative soliton resonance in the proposed laser has important potential for high-energy pulse generation otherwise limited by the spectrum ltering effect.

2. Experiment and discussion The experimental setup of the proposed all-normal-dispersion mode-locked ytterbium-doped ber ring laser based on nonlinear polarization rotation is shown in Fig. 1. The laser cavity consists of a 1.8 m ytterbium-doped ber (YDF) with an absorption of

Corresponding author. E-mail address: stellarzh@hotmail.com (Z.X. Zhang).

0030-3992/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.optlastec.2012.09.020

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Fig. 1. Experimental setup of all-normal-dispersion mode-locked ytterbium-doped ber ring laser (LD: laser diode, WDM: wavelength-division multiplexer, PC: polarization controller, PDI: polarization-dependent isolator, OC: optical coupler, SWC: single-window coupler, PD: photodetector, OSA: optical spectrum analyzer).

Fig. 2. Q-switched pulse trains with repetition rates of (a) 5.77 kHz and (b) 6.75 kHz.

Fig. 3. Q-switched mode-locked pulse trains with envelope repetition rates of (a) 62.99 kHz, (b) 110.86 kHz and (c) single Q-switch envelop with mode-locking modulation.

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350 dB/m at a wavelength of 980 nm as the gain medium, a 980/ 1060 wavelength-division multiplexer (WDM) to couple the 980 nm pump laser to the YDF, two polarization controllers (PCs) to select suitable polarization states, and a 10:90 coupler to output the signal with 10% port. It is important that a polarization dependent isolator (PDI) with ber pigtails is sandwiched between two PCs both to ensure the unidirectional operation and to act as a polarizer [19]. The characteristic of our laser is its all-ber structure, not including any open-air section. The whole cavity length is $ 12 m, corresponding to the round cavity period of $ 59 ns. Note that in our present laser there is no deliberate spectrum lter. Except the YDF with the chromatic dispersion parameter D 60 ps/nm/km, the other bers used are standard single-mode bers with D 38 ps/nm/km. The total dispersion of the whole laser cavity is about 0.3 ps2. Out of the cavity, another 50:50 coupler is used to split output so as to simultaneously observe the optical spectrum and pulse. The resolution bandwidth of the optical spectrum analyzer is

140 130 120 Repetition rate (kHz) 110 100 90 80 70 60 50 150 200 250 300 350 400 Pump power (mW) 450 500 550

Fig. 4. The relationship between Q-switched mode-locked pulse repetition rate and pump power.

0.01 nm, and the bandwidths of the photodetector and oscilloscope are 12 GHz and 2 GHz, respectively. In the experiment, with the increase of pump power and proper adjustment of the polarization controllers, several different operation modes have been observed. The threshold of the CW lasing is 150 mW. With the pump power increased to 164 mW, the Qswitched pulses could be rst obtained by adjusting the PC1 and PC2 carefully, indicating that the threshold of the Q-switching was achieved. Once the Q-switched pulse has been generated, the repetition rate increases with the pump power under the unaltered polarization states. The two typical Q-switched pulse traces in the temporal domain are given in Fig. 2. The repetition rates are about 5.77 kHz and 6.75 kHz in Fig. 2(a) and (b), respectively. On further increase of the pump power, the Q-switched modelocked pulse will appear with proper polarization controller orientations. When the pump power is increased to 217 mW, self-mode-locking in Q-switched pulses was observed by adjusting the PC1 and PC2 carefully, with an approximate modulation period of 59 ns, corresponding to the cavity transfer time. The typical Q-switched mode-locked pulse trains with envelope repetition rates of 62.99 kHz and 110.86 kHz are shown in Fig. 3(a) and (b), respectively. A deeper intensity modulation can be observed with higher pump power. Fig. 3(c) shows the enlarged view of single Q-switch pulse with mode-locking modulation. The relation between the repetition rate of Q-switch and the pump power is given in Fig. 4. With the increase of the pump power from 217 mW to 467 mW, the repetition rate of Q-switch envelopes is driven from 62.99 kHz to 120.64 kHz. It is noted that the Q-switch repetition rate presents a slight excursion due to dithering of pump power. Besides Q-switched and Q-switched mode-locked pulses, the CW mode-locked pulses can also be obtained with further increase of the pump power and proper polarization controller orientations. According to the mode-locking theory, the relationship between cavity length L and repetition rate f is f c/nL, where c is the light speed in vacuum and n is the refractive index of the transmission ber. We can get the repetition rate as 16.95 MHz from Fig. 5(a), so the whole associated laser cavity length is 12.04 m. The results agree well with the experimental setup. A remarkable feature of the present laser is that there is no

Fig. 5. (a) CW mode-locked pulse train and (b) single mode-locked pulses under two different pump powers.

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-30 Output power (dBm) Intensity (a.u.) -40 -50 -60 -70

1.0

0.5

0.0 -80 1040 1060 1080 1100 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 Wavelength (nm) Time dalay (ps)

Fig. 6. (a) Spectra of CW mode-locked pulses under two different pump powers and (b) autocorrelation trace under pump power of 523 mW and its Gaussian tting.

Fig. 7. (a) Noise-like pulse train and (b) enlarged view of single noise-like pulse.

deliberate lter in the laser cavity. The pulse energy can reach very large values without pulse breaking, with pulse duration increasing in the process. Fig. 5(b) shows the variation of single mode-locked pulse shape with the pump power increase, resulting in 4.6 ns pulse duration under pump power of 423 mW and 6.8 ns under 523 mW. The corresponding spectra are presented in Fig. 6(a), showing no steep spectral edges on the spectral proles. It is indicated that the near square pulses obtained in our laser displays the resonance feature exactly, increasing its pulse width and energy indenitely while keeping its amplitude constant. The CW mode-locking can continue for several weeks without external interruption. Fig. 6(b) is the autocorrelation trace under pump power of 523 mW and its Gaussian tting. The pulse duration is 13.6 ps corresponding to a large chirp. When the pump power was larger than the mode-locking threshold, the noise-like pulses were also obtained under proper polarization controller orientations, which are actually caused by the soliton collapse effect and the positive cavity feedback in the lasers. Fig. 7(a) shows noise-like pulse train, which indicates that the repetition rate of noise-like pulse envelope is 16.95 MHz, corresponding to the fundamental cavity frequency. Fig. 7(b) is the enlarged view of single noise-like pulse envelope. It can be seen that there are multiple sub-pulses ceaselessly moving within a pulse envelope. The spectrum of noise-like pulse with

-30

-40 Output power (dBm)

-50

-60 10 dB bandwidth=127 nm -70

-80 1000 1050 1100 1150 Wavelength (nm) 1200

Fig. 8. Spectrum of noise-like pulse.

bandwidth of 127 nm is shown in Fig. 8, which is the largest bandwidth of noise-like pulse to the best of our knowledge. The variation of output power vs. pump power under different

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Q-switch 40 Output power (mW) CW 30

Q-switch Mode locking

Mode locking

References
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Fig. 9. The variation of output power with the pump power under different operation regimes.

operation regimes is summarized in Fig. 9. For the sake of readability, the overlap between different operation regimes has been neglected.

3. Conclusions In conclusion, we have demonstrated a passively mode-locked all-normal-dispersion ytterbium-doped ber laser with diverse output states: Q-switch, dissipative soliton resonance, and noiselike pulses, depending on pump power and polarization. As a transition between Q-switching and CW mode-locking, Q-switched mode-locking has also been observed. This work could help to understand the dynamics of the all-normaldispersion ber laser without spectrum lter. Moreover, dissipative soliton resonance in the proposed laser has important potential for high-energy pulse generation otherwise limited by the spectrum ltering effect.

Acknowledgments This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (60807014 and 60967002), and the Science Foundation of Jiangxi Provincial Department of Education (GJJ12170).