Theoretical and experimental investigations of dispersion-managed, polarization-maintaining 1-GHz mode-locked fiber lasers

Low-noise mode-locking in a GHz repetition rate Tm3+-doped fiber laser

We demonstrate a GHz repetition rate mode-locked Tm3+-doped fiber laser with low noise. Based on a home-made Tm3+-doped barium gallo-germanate fiber with reduced dispersion, a broad optical spectrum of mode-locking is achieved, and its amplified spontaneous emission quantum-limited timing jitter is largely suppressed. Besides, we carefully investigate the influence of the intracavity pump strength on the noise performance of the mode-locked pulses and find that manipulating the intracavity pump power can be an effective method for optimizing the timing jitter and relative intensity noise (RIN). Particularly, RIN, which originated from the relaxation oscillation, can be effectively suppressed by 33 dB at offset frequencies of >1 MHz. The integrated timing jitter and RIN are only 7.9 fs (10 kHz-10 MHz) and 0.05% (10 Hz-10 MHz), respectively.

Generation of 35 fs, 20 μJ, GHz pulse burst by hybrid fiber amplification technique

We have proposed and demonstrated the generation of a high-energy, ultrashort pulse duration, GHz pulse burst polarization-maintaining fiber amplification system that utilizes both chirped-pulse amplification and self-similar amplification techniques. Such hybrid fiber amplification system produces 22 μJ-energy bursts of 200 pulses with a 1.02-GHz intra-burst pulse repetition rate and a 1-MHz inter-burst repetition rate. The center wavelength of the amplified compressed pulse is 1065 nm, with a 3 dB spectral bandwidth of 65 nm. The pulse duration of optimal compression is ∼35 fs, which represents the shortest pulse duration reported to date for any multi-microjoule class amplification system with a repetition rate at the GHz level. At the same time, only common double-cladding Yb3+-doped fiber is used as the gain fiber, without any large-mode-area Yb3+-doped photonic crystal fiber, makes the system compact and reliable by the simple fusion operation.