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Mode locking of a wavelength-swept laser
1Harvard Medical School and Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, 50 Blossom Street, BAR 718, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA. syun@hms.harvard.edu
Optics Letters
|October 8, 2005
Summary
Stable, self-starting mode-locked pulses are generated using a wavelength-swept fiber laser. This method utilizes a scanning filter and self-phase modulation to produce 100 ps pulses with a 27 nm wavelength sweep.
Area of Science:
- Optics and Photonics
- Laser Physics
Background:
- Mode-locked lasers are crucial for generating ultrashort optical pulses.
- Wavelength-swept lasers offer tunable output for various applications.
- Achieving stable, self-starting mode-locking in swept lasers presents challenges.
Purpose of the Study:
- To demonstrate a method for generating self-starting, stable mode-locked pulses from a wavelength-swept laser.
- To investigate the interplay between intracavity scanning filters and self-phase modulation for pulse generation.
Main Methods:
- Utilized an erbium-doped fiber laser.
- Incorporated a scanning Fabry-Perot filter within the laser cavity.
- Leveraged self-phase modulation for pulse shaping and stabilization.
Main Results:
- Achieved self-starting, stable mode-locked operation.
- Generated optical pulses with a duration of 100 picoseconds (ps).
- Observed a center wavelength sweep of 27 nanometers (nm) around 1.55 micrometers (µm).
- Attained a repetition rate of 12 megahertz (MHz).
- Demonstrated the wavelength sweep occurred within 1 millisecond (ms).
Conclusions:
- The combination of a scanning filter and self-phase modulation enables self-starting, stable mode-locked pulse generation in wavelength-swept lasers.
- The developed technique provides a practical method for creating tunable, picosecond-duration optical pulses.
- This approach holds potential for applications requiring rapidly swept, stable laser outputs.