A stable, dispersion-tuned harmonically mode-locked fiber ring laser using a SOA

Abstract

A stable, dispersion-tuned HMLFRL has been demonstrated. SMN was significantly reduced by introducing a SOA into the ring cavity (13-dB improvement in side-mode suppression). Only a 0.25-MHz variation in the modulation frequency was needed to achieve a 10-nm smooth wavelength tuning. Both temporal and spectral widths remained approximately the same during tuning. A 5.3-ps pulse width was obtained at 10 GHz with pulse compression.