Effect of birefringence on the bandwidth of noise-like pulse in an erbium-doped fiber laser

Abstract

We report on the generation of superbroad spectrum bunched noise-like pulses from a passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser, in which the cavity is made of purely anomalous dispersion fibers. The maximum 3 dB spectral bandwidth of the pulse is about 98 nm. We show numerically that the superbroad spectrum of the pulse is caused by the fiber birefringence.