Flexible all-PM NALM Yb:fiber laser design for frequency comb applications: operation regimes and their noise properties

Author(s)

Aline S. Mayer, Wilfrid Grosinger, Jakob Fellinger, Georg Winkler, Lukas W. Perner, Stefan Droste, Sarper H. Salman, Chen Li, Christoph M. Heyl, Ingmar Hartl, Oliver H. Heckl

Abstract

We present a flexible all-polarization-maintaining (PM) mode-locked ytterbium (Yb):fiber laser based on a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (NALM). In addition to providing detailed design considerations, we discuss the different operation regimes accessible by this versatile laser architecture and experimentally analyze five representative mode-locking states. These five states were obtained in a 78-MHz configuration at different intracavity group delay dispersion (GDD) values ranging from anomalous (-0.035 ps(2)) to normal (+0.015 ps(2)). We put a particular focus on the characterization of the intensity noise as well as the free-running linewidth of the carrier-envelope-offset (CEO) frequency as a function of the different operation regimes. We observe that operation points far from the spontaneous emission peak of Yb (similar to 1030 nm) and close to zero intracavity dispersion can be found, where the influence of pump noise is strongly suppressed. For such an operation point, we show that a CEO linewidth of less than 10-kHz at 1 s integration can be obtained without any active stabilization. Published by The Optical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Organisation(s)

Faculty Center for Nano Structure Research

External organisation(s)

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Helmholtz-Institute Jena

Journal

Optics Express

Volume

28

Pages

18946-18968

No. of pages

23

ISSN

1094-4087

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.394543

Publication date

06-2020

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

103021 Optics

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/bd39ea73-8e87-473f-9aee-fe16eb06b4ca