Period multiplication in mode-locked figure-of-9 fiber lasers

Period multiplication is a bifurcation phenomenon, which depicts a typical roadmap from periodic steady-state to chaos. There has been particular interest in studying period multiplication properties in mode-locked lasers, but the mechanism behind is still not well-studied. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a figure-of-9 fiber laser which can generate period-multiplied pulses with long-term stability. Further theoretical insight is obtained by numerical simulations, which clearly shows that the ratio between the distances of each bifurcation point is approaching the Feigenbaum constant. We believe that the laser design presented here could be a stable and reliable ultrafast optical platform to study bifurcation and chaos, which also has potential applications in optical frequency comb and all-optical modulation.