Authors

J. E. Antonio-Lopez; J. J. Sanchez-Mondragon; P. LikamWa;D. A. May-Arrioja

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Laser Phys.

Keywords

erbium-doped fiber laser; tunable laser; multimode interference; multimode fiber; RING LASER; L-BAND; FILTER; NM; Optics; Physics, Applied

Abstract

An optofluidically tunable fiber laser based on multimode interference (MMI) effects with a wide tuning range is proposed and demonstrated. The tunable mechanism is based on an MMI fiber filter fabricated using a special fiber known as no-core fiber, which is a multimode fiber (MMF) without cladding. Therefore, when the MMI filter is covered by liquid the optical properties of the no-core fiber are modified, which allow us to tune the peak wavelength response of the MMI filter. Rather than applying the liquid on the entire no-core fiber, we change the liquid level along the no-core fiber, which provides a highly linear tuning response. In addition, by selecting the adequate refractive index of the liquid we can also choose the tuning range. We demonstrate the versatility of the optofluidically tunable MMI filter by wavelength tuning two different gain media, erbium doped fiber and a semiconductor optical amplifier, achieving tuning ranges of 55 and 90 nm respectively. In both cases, we achieve side-mode suppression ratios (SMSR) better than 50 dBm with output power variations of less than 0.76 dBm over the whole tuning range.

Journal Title

Laser Physics

Volume

24

Issue/Number

8

Publication Date

1-1-2014

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

6

WOS Identifier

WOS:000339322800014

ISSN

1054-660X

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