ABSTRACT
We utilize a high quality calcium fluoride whispering-gallery-mode resonator to passively stabilize a simple erbium doped fiber ring laser with an emission frequency of 196THz (wavelength 1530nm) to an instantaneous linewidth below 650Hz. This corresponds to a relative stability of 3.3 × 10(-12) over 16µs. In order to characterize the linewidth we use two identical self-built lasers and a commercial laser to determine the individual lasing linewidth via the three-cornered-hat method. We further show that the lasers are finely tunable throughout the erbium gain region.
ABSTRACT
A fiber laser is stabilized by introducing a calcium fluoride (CaF(2)) whispering-gallery-mode resonator as a filtering element in a ring cavity. It is set up using a semiconductor optical amplifier as a gain medium. The resonator is critically coupled through prisms, and used as a filtering element to suppress the laser linewidth. A three-cornered-hat method is used and shows a stability of 10(-11) after 10 micros. Using the self-heterodyne beat technique, the linewidth is determined to be 13 kHz. This implies an enhancement factor of 10(3) with respect to the passive cavity linewidth.
