Actively mode-locked visible upconversion fiber laser.

Active mode locking of a Pr(3+)/Yb (3+) -doped upconversion fluoride fiber laser with an all-fiber ZnO acousto-optic phase modulator is demonstrated for the first time to the authors' knowledge. Optical pulses of ~550-ps duration with a repetition rate of 239 MHz at a wavelength of 635 nm have been generated.

Stable and widely tunable all-fiber Pr(3+)-doped cw laser system using fiber Bragg gratings.

A simple and strictly all-fiber 1300-nm cw laser is presented. It is tunable over 16 nm with 0.5-nm linewidth and several milliwatts of output power in the whole tuning range from 1292 to 1308 nm. The setup uses a fiber Bragg grating as a combined tuning element and narrow-band output mirror. The simplicity and stability of this system are due to the following two characteristics: First, polarization control is not necessary anywhere in the system, and second, a wavelength-selective system and a narrow-band mirror are combined into one novel fiber-optic element.

Fabrication of high-mechanical-resistance Bragg gratings in single-mode optical fibers with continuous-wave ultraviolet laser side exposure.

The mechanical resistance of single-mode fibers containing fiber Bragg gratings inscribed with cw UV laser irradiation is almost identical to that of pristine fiber. The median breaking strength of the gratings' Weibull distribution is more than 5 GPa, and the m value is of the order of 70. Based on a dynamic fatigue model, a Bragg grating lifetime of 50 years with a failure probability of 0.001 is predicted, assuming a constant applied stress of 0.96 GPa.