Generation of stretched pulses and dissipative solitons at 2 µm from an all-fiber mode-locked laser using carbon nanotube saturable absorbers.

We demonstrate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, a thulium-doped, all-fiber, mode-locked laser using a carbon nanotube saturable absorber, operating in the dissipative-soliton regime and the stretched-pulse-soliton regime. The net dispersion of the laser cavity is adjusted by inserting different lengths of normal dispersion fiber, resulting in different mode-locking regimes. These results could serve as a foundation for the optimization of mode-locked fiber-laser cavity design at the 2 µm wavelength region.

Generation regimes of bidirectional hybridly mode-locked ultrashort pulse erbium-doped all-fiber ring laser with a distributed polarizer.

We report on the stable picosecond and femtosecond pulse generation from the bidirectional erbium-doped all-fiber ring laser hybridly mode-locked with a coaction of a single-walled carbon nanotube-based saturable absorber and nonlinear polarization evolution that was introduced through the insertion of the short-segment polarizing fiber. Depending on the total intracavity dispersion value, the laser emits conservative solitons, transform-limited Gaussian pulses, or highly chirped stretched pulses with almost 20 nm wide parabolic spectrum in both clockwise (CW) and counterclockwise (CCW) directions of the ring. Owing to the polarizing action in the cavity, we have demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, an efficient tuning of soliton pulse characteristics for both CW and CCW channels via an appropriate polarization control. We believe that the bidirectional laser presented may be highly promising for gyroscopic and other dual-channel applications.