Widely tunable 2 μm continuous-wave and mode-locked fiber laser

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a widely tunable mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser. The laser can operate at both continuous-wave and mode-locked states at different pump power levels. A classic nonlinear polarization rotation structure is employed to obtain the passive mode-locked laser. A birefringence Lyot filter as a fiber comb filter is used to expand the tuning range. Thanks to the filtering component, the tuning range of the continuous-wave laser can reach 127 nm (1823-1950 nm). The tuning ranges of the single-wavelength and dual-wavelength mode-locked lasers are 94 nm (1835-1929 nm) and 87 nm (1831-1918 nm), respectively, with a 3.085 MHz repetition rate and 75 ps pulse width.