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Optics Express

Experiment and theoretical explanation of optical bistability in a single erbium-doped fiber ring laser

Jiafeng Shao, Shule Li, Qishun Shen, Zhijing Wu, Zhuangqi Cao, Jianghua Gu

Published Jan 1, 2007• 18 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Optical bistability phenomenon in a single fiber ring laser employing erbium-doped fiber (EDF) as gain medium is observed in our experiment. In the EDF amplifiers, the photons of pump light cannot completely transfer into that of signal light because of various attenuation factors. This part of loss (useless pump loss) and active spontaneous emission (ASE) can both lower the small-signal gain of the EDF, and can eventually result in the bistability phenomenon. The range of this bistability has a complicated relationship with the length of the EDF, the erbium-ion doping concentration, the cavity loss and the useless loss coefficient of the pump light.

DOI
10.1364/oe.15.003673

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Journal of the Optical Society of America B•Aug 1, 1997•10 citations
Optical bistability phenomenon in a single fiber ring laser employing erbium-doped fiber (EDF) as gain medium is observed in our experiment. In the EDF amplifiers, the photons of pump light cannot completely transfer into that of signal light because of various attenuation factors. This part of loss (useless pump loss) and active spontaneous emission (ASE) can both lower the small-signal gain of the EDF, and can eventually result in the bistability phenomenon. The range of this bistability has a complicated relationship with the length of the EDF, the erbium-ion doping concentration, the cavity loss and the useless loss coefficient of the pump light.
The structure of combining two segments of erbium-doped fiber (EDF) together—one EDF acting as an amplifier and the other as an absorber—has a special gain characteristic curve which has a maximum gain with an increase in the input signal power. This special gain characteristic curve can lead to an optical bistability (OB) phenomenon in a fiber-ring laser employing an EDF of this structure. By adjusting the pump light power injected into the second segment of the EDF, we can change the behavior of the absorber and can, therefore, control the range of the bistability region. A method is proposed to calculate the tunable optical bistability, and the calculation result is in accordance with our experiment.
The authors investigate the optical bistability in an L-band dual-wavelength erbium-doped fiber (EDF) laser with overlapping cavities. The bistable input-output hysteresis behavior of the two lasing wavelengths evolves in antiphase. The bistable region is tens of milliwatts wide. The bistability is essentially due to the homogeneous saturable absorption of EDF. The cross-gain saturation causes the bistabilities of the two lasing lines to evolve in antiphase with respect to each other. The gain clamping effect helps to widen the bistable region, which may be controlled by the cavity loss and by the EDF length.
A theoretical model that allows numerical simulations of optical bistability phenomena in CW-pumped erbium-doped fiber lasers is presented. Results of the simulations match correctly with previous experimental data. In order to simulate this phenomenon, the population inversion and optical powers longitudinal distributions along the active fiber have been considered. If this fiber is long enough, it has been found that the transition between the non-lasing and the lasing states involves a dramatic redistribution of the population inversion along the active medium. This fact makes that non-lasing and lasing states constitute different enough initial conditions which determine different final responses to the same control parameter, that is to say, bistability. On the other hand, a theoretical justification is found for a previous experimental result which pointed out that the bistability range becomes reduced if an external signal is launched to the cavity. Finally, the bistability range width dependence on the active fiber length is analyzed.
We analyze the gain behavior of an optical amplifier that is optically pumped by two counterpropagating beams that are mutually coherent. The pump beams interfere inside the amplifier, resulting in a nonuniform distribution of the pumping. In the low-pump-intensity regions of the amplifier, the medium absorbs, and in the high-pump-intensity regions amplification can be obtained. The combination of the absorbing regions and the amplifying can lead to bistable behavior inside a resonator. The effect was analyzed for three-level gain media applicable to erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and lasers.