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IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

Optical bistability in an L-band dual-wavelength erbium-doped fiber laser with overlapping cavities

Qinghe Mao, John W. Y. Lit

Published Sep 1, 2002• 45 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1109/lpt.2002.801078

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Journal of the Optical Society of America B•Aug 1, 1997•10 citations
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.
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.
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.
Detailed experimental data on the efficiency of two-wave mixing via population dynamic grating in erbium-doped fiber (EDF) with saturable optical absorption are presented. The measurements were performed for spectral region 1490–1560 nm of the EDF absorption/gain spectrum, both for absorption and for phase (refractive index) components of the dynamic grating. The reported data confirm the earlier results published for some particular recording wavelengths. In particular, the amplitude gratings recorded in EDF in the central part of this region (1520–1560 nm) are significantly less efficient (by more than 1 order of magnitude) than it can be estimated from measurements of a spatially uniform fiber absorption saturation. It is shown, however, that this effect cannot be explained by spatial migration of the Er3+ excited state. At the short-wavelength spectrum side around 1490 nm, the disagreement between the experimentally observed and the evaluated grating amplitude is minimum (∼0.3) and can, probably, be attributed to the polarization mismatch in the counterpropagating recording waves.
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.