All-Polarization Maintaining Single-Longitudinal-Mode Fiber Laser with Ultra-High OSNR, Sub-kHz Linewidth and Extremely High Stability

Abstract

An all-polarization maintaining (PM) single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) with ultra-high optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), ultra-narrow linewidth and extremely high stability is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. A double-ring passive subring resonator (DR-PSR) composed of two single-coupler fiber rings and a length of unpumped EDF-based saturable absorber filter is designed and employed in the EDFL to serve as the efficient SLM selecting element to guarantee SLM lasing with excellent output performance. The all-PM structure enables the proposed EDFL to present strong ability to resist the environment disturbance. At the pump power of 100 mW, we obtain an SLM EDFL with an ultra-high OSNR of 83 dB and an ultra-narrow linewidth of 459 Hz. For the SLM operation, the all-PM EDFL processes outstanding stability performance of both the wavelength lasing and the output power. The maximum fluctuations of the center wavelength and output power are 0.012 nm and 0.01 dB.