Timing jitter of high-repetition-rate mode-locked fiber lasers

We characterize the timing jitter of the pulse trains from 880 MHz Yb-doped nonlinear polarization rotation mode-locked fiber lasers based on a balanced optical cross-correlation method. Jitter spectral density at different net-cavity dispersions has been characterized, and the near-zero dispersion shows the lowest rms timing jitter (10 fs rms, integrated from 30 kHz to 5 MHz). The measurements have been compared with analytical models. The comparison shows that the RIN-coupled timing jitter by nonlinearity is the dominated origin of the measured timing jitter below ∼100  kHz, while amplified spontaneous emission noise makes a major contribution in the high frequency range above hundreds of kilohertz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first high-precision timing jitter characterization for the ∼gigahertz level repetition rate mode-locked fiber lasers. The results will be of great importance for further improving the laser performance for many applications.