Switchable multiwavelength fiber laser by using a compact in-fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer

Abstract

We propose a simple and compact method for implementing an in-fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer, which is constructed with two optical paths, propagating through the core and the ring-shaped silica cladding modes in the double-cladding fibers. Strong cladding-mode resonance across the thin inner cladding is used to excite the cladding modes. The measured spectra fringe presents high-contrast interference from cascading a pair of well-overlapped resonant spectra dips. In combination with the nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) technique, switchable and tunable multi-channel laser outputs are experimentally demonstrated with a fluctuation of less than 0.1 dB.