Low-repetition-rate all-polarization maintaining thulium-doped passively modelocked fiber laser

Abstract

We have developed a passively mode-locked, all-polarization maintaining, low-repetition-rate thulium-doped fiber laser (PM TDFL) emitting at 1951 nm and pumped by an erbium-ytterbium-doped all-fiber laser at 1561 nm. The PM TDFL was developed with a 44.67 m long polarization-maintaining all-fiber resonator Fabry-Perot using a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror at one end and a highly reflective fiber Bragg grating at the other. In this way, transform-limited low-repetition-rate light pulses at 2.3 MHz were generated, with each light pulse having a temporal width of 81 ps, and a spectral width of 50 pm. We have also compared the performance of this laser with a shortened version of this cavity, 6.25 m long, emitting at 15.6 MHz.