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Soliton–similariton fibre laser

Nature Photonics volume 4, pages 307–311 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Rapid progress in passively mode-locked fibre lasers1,2,3,4,5,6 is currently driven by the recent discovery of new mode-locking mechanisms, namely, the self-similarly evolving pulse (similariton)7 and the all-normal-dispersion (dissipative soliton) regimes8,9. These are fundamentally different from the previously known soliton10 and dispersion-managed soliton (stretched-pulse)11 regimes. Here, we report a fibre laser in which the mode-locked pulse evolves as a similariton in the gain segment and transforms into a regular soliton in the rest of the cavity. To our knowledge, this is the first observation of similaritons in the presence of gain, that is, amplifier similaritons, within a laser cavity. The existence of solutions in a dissipative nonlinear cavity comprising a periodic combination of two distinct nonlinear waves is novel and likely to be applicable to various other nonlinear systems. For very large filter bandwidths, our laser approaches the working regime of dispersion-managed soliton lasers; for very small anomalous-dispersion segment lengths it approaches dissipative soliton lasers.

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Figure 1: Pulse evolution in the laser.
Figure 2: Numerical simulation results.
Figure 3: Experimental set-up.
Figure 4: Comparison of experimental and numerical results for operation at βnet(2) = 0.0136 ps2.
Figure 5: Spectral breathing ratio of the laser.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) grant no. 106G089, Marie Curie International Research Grant (IRG) grant no. 046585, EU 7th Framework project UNAM-REGPOT grant no. 203953, Bilkent University Internal Research Funds, and the Distinguished Young Scientist award of the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA). The authors would like to thank O. Aytür for critical reading of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Program of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey

    Bulent Oktem

  2. Department of Physics, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey

    Coşkun Ülgüdür & F. Ömer Ilday

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  1. Bulent Oktem
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Contributions

B.O. and C.Ü. conducted the experiments and analysed the data. B.O. performed the numerical simulations. F.Ö.I. and B.O. wrote the paper with contributions from C.Ü.

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Correspondence to F. Ömer Ilday.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Oktem, B., Ülgüdür, C. & Ilday, F. Soliton–similariton fibre laser. Nature Photon 4, 307–311 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.33

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