Single-Longitudinal-Mode Triple-Ring Brillouin Fiber Laser With a Saturable Absorber Ring Resonator

• Published in: Journal of lightwave technology Vol. 35; no. 9; pp. 1744 - 1749
• Main Authors: Liu, Yi, Zhang, Mingjiang, Zhang, Jianzhong, Wang, Yuncai
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.05.2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Brillouin fiber laser; Brillouin zones; Cavity resonators; Erbium; Erbium-doped fiber lasers; Lasers; Noise levels; Optical communication; Optical fiber amplifiers; Optical fiber communication; Optical noise; Power control; Scattering; single longitudinal mode; Stability; triple ring; Variations
• ISSN: 0733-8724; 1558-2213
• DOI: 10.1109/JLT.2017.2664071

A single-longitudinal-mode triple-ring Brillouin fiber laser (TR-BFL) with a saturable absorber ring (SAR) resonator is proposed and investigated experimentally. Triple ring is composed of a 1-km-long single-mode fiber (SMF) ring, a 100-m-long SMF ring, and an SAR with 8-m-long unpumped Erbium-doped fiber, respectively. Compared with the existing techniques, a better performance of TR-BFL can be obtained because of the 1-km-long cavity length and the triple-ring configuration with an SAR, which suppresses the weaker unwanted mode and does not require power control accurately and import additional loss. At the same time, a frequency-locking system based on Pound-Drever-Hall technology is used to reduce the external perturbations and the instability caused by 1-km-long cavity and triple-ring configuration, respectively. In the experiment, 185 linewidth-reduction ratio is obtained while still maintaining 72-dB optical signal-to-noise ratio. Meanwhile, approximately 65-Hz linewidth is measured with a delayed self-heterodyne method using a 100-km delay fiber, and 5% power fluctuation at 1-mW laser output power is observed every 1 min in 50 min.