All-fiber all-normal-dispersion femtosecond laser with nonlinear multimodal interference based saturable absorber

TL;DR

This paper introduces an all-fiber, all-normal dispersion ytterbium-doped laser that uses nonlinear multimodal interference as a saturable absorber to generate ultrashort dissipative soliton pulses with high stability and low cost.

Contribution

It presents the first all-fiber all-normal dispersion laser utilizing multimodal interference based saturable absorber for dissipative soliton generation.

Findings

Generates 276 fs pulses after external compression.

Achieves stable mode-locking with high sideband suppression.

Demonstrates numerical and experimental agreement on cavity dynamics.

Abstract

In this letter, we demonstrate the first all-fiber all-normal dispersion ytterbium-doped oscillator with nonlinear multimodal interference based saturable absorber capable to generate ultrashort dissipative soliton pulses. Additional to functioning as a saturable absorber, the use of multimode fiber segments between single mode fibers also ensures the bandpass filtering via multimode interference reimaging necessary to obtain dissipative soliton mode-locking. The oscillator generates dissipative soliton pulses at 1030 nm with 5.8 mW average power, 5 ps duration and 44.25 MHz repetition rate. Pulses are dechirped to 276 fs via an external grating compressor. All-fiber cavity design ensures high stability and $\sim$70 dB sideband suppression is measured in RF spectrum. Numerical simulations are performed to investigate cavity dynamics and obtained results well-matched with experimental observations. The proposed cavity presents an alternative approach to achieve all-fiber dissipative soliton mode-locking with a simple and low-cost design.