Dispersion engineering of mode-locked fibre lasers

Abstract

Mode-locked fibre lasers are important sources of ultrashort pulses, where stable pulse generation is achieved through a balance of periodic amplitude and phase evolutions. A range of distinct cavity pulse dynamics have been revealed, arising from the interplay between dispersion and nonlinearity in addition to dissipative processes such as filtering. This has led to the discovery of numerous novel operating regimes, offering significantly improved laser performance. In this Topical Review, we summarise the main steady-state pulse dynamics reported to date through cavity dispersion engineering, including average solitons, dispersion-managed solitons, dissipative solitons, giant-chirped pulses and similaritons. Characteristic features and the stabilisation mechanism of each regime are described, supported by numerical modelling, in addition to the typical performance and limitations. Opportunities for further pulse energy scaling are discussed, in addition to considering other recent advances including automated self-tuning cavities and fluoride-fibre-based mid-infrared mode-locked lasers.

References in corpus (9)

• Self-Similar Evolution of Parabolic Pulses in a Laser
• The laminar-turbulent transition in a fibre laser
• Towards 'smart lasers': self-optimisation of an ultrafast pulse source using a genetic algorithm
• Stochasticity, periodicity and coherent structures in partially mode-locked fibre lasers
• Genetic algorithm-based control of birefringent filtering for self-tuning, self-pulsing fiber lasers
• Generation of 70-fs pulses at 2.86 μm from a mid-infrared fiber laser
• Mode-locked Yb-doped fiber laser emitting broadband pulses at ultra-low repetition rates
• Scalar Nanosecond Pulse Generation in a Nanotube Mode-Locked Environmentally Stable Fiber Laser
• Dark solitons in laser radiation build-up dynamics

Cited by in corpus (8)

• On-demand harnessing of photonic soliton molecules
• Mode-locked dysprosium fiber laser: picosecond pulse generation from 2.97 to 3.30 μm
• Ultrafast 3.5 μm fiber laser
• Dispersion management of a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror-based Erbium-doped fiber laser
• Intracavity filtering in SESAM mode-locked fiber lasers: soliton effects and noise performance
• Semi-linear all-polarization-maintaining Yb-doped fiber laser oscillator manifesting dual operation regime at net anomalous dispersion
• Dispersion-managed soliton fiber laser with random dispersion, multiphoton absorption and gain dispersion
• Predicting instabilities of a tuneable ring laser with an iterative map model