Abstract

Pulsed laser sources based on optical fiber technology offer numerous advantages such as robust operation, compactness, lack of alignment requirements. A promising alternative to well-known methods of pulse forming mechanisms by passive mode locking [1-3] is the pulse generation based on cascaded re-shaping and re-amplification [4]. In this work, we investigate this method from the perspective of practical implementation and present our experimental results of the picosecond optical pulse generator scheme based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) filters and operating at ~1064 nm wavelength. Main advantages of the proposed scheme are: simple all-fiber system design, high-pulse-energy output and absence of components prone to long-term degradation, such as semiconductor saturable absorbers (SESAM) [5], thus enabling extended lifetime of such pulsed lasers.

© 2015 IEEE