Raman-driven destabilization of mode-locked long cavity fiber lasers: fundamental limitations to energy scalability

We report on the destabilization of the mode-locking operation of a long cavity fiber laser. We show that the destabilization is accompanied by the abrupt emergence of a strong frequency-downshifted Stokes signal, and simultaneously, we find that the laser output displays characteristics typical of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOptics letters Vol. 38; no. 15; p. 2644
Main Authors Aguergaray, Claude, Runge, Antoine, Erkintalo, Miro, Broderick, Neil G R
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.08.2013
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Summary:We report on the destabilization of the mode-locking operation of a long cavity fiber laser. We show that the destabilization is accompanied by the abrupt emergence of a strong frequency-downshifted Stokes signal, and simultaneously, we find that the laser output displays characteristics typical of noise-like pulses. We use numerical simulations to illustrate how the Stokes signal grows from stimulated Raman scattering and plays a key role in the destabilization of the laser output. Our results indicate that stimulated Raman scattering may impose an ultimate limit on the energy scalability via cavity lengthening.
ISSN:1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/OL.38.002644