Low Noise, tunable Ho:fiber Soliton Oscillator for Ho:YLF Amplifier Seeding

TL;DR

This paper introduces a tunable, low-noise Ho:fiber ring oscillator designed for efficient seeding of Ho:YLF amplifiers, offering adjustable wavelength and spectral width with stable, pedestal-free pulses.

Contribution

A novel, passively mode-locked Ho:fiber oscillator with independent tunability and low noise, optimized for seeding Ho:YLF amplifiers, with spectral and temporal characteristics tailored for this application.

Findings

Wavelength tunability from 2040 nm to 2070 nm.

Spectral width adjustable from 5 nm to 10 nm.

Relative intensity noise of 0.13% RMS.

Abstract

We present a passively mode-locked, tunable soliton Ho:fiber ring oscillator, optimized for seeding of Ho:YLF amplifiers. The oscillator is independently tunable in central wavelength and spectral width from 2040 nm to 2070 nm and from 5 nm to 10 nm, respectively. At all settings the pulse energy within the soliton is around 800 pJ. The soliton oscillator was optimized to fully meets the spectral requirements for seeding Ho:YLF amplifiers. Its Kelly sidebands are located outside the amplifier gain spectrum, resulting in a train of about 1 ps long pedestal-free pulses with relative intensity noise (RIN) of only 0.13 % RMS when integrated from 1 Hz to Nyquist frequency.