Abstract

Widely tunable single-mode lasers are potentially of great importance in optical telecommunications systems. Recently a number of erbium fiber laser configurations, yielding single-mode operation, have been investigated. Several groups have constructed widely tunable, single-mode erbium fiber ring lasers.^1-3 All these devices achieve single-mode operation by using tunable filters with a bandwidth (BW) of the order of ~0.5 nm. However, to our knowledge, all these groups report rapid mode-hopping with a range of the order of several gigahertz.

© 1992 Optical Society of America