Passively Femtosecond Mode-Locked Erbium-Doped Fiber Oscillator with External Pulse Compressor for Frequency Comb Generation

Abstract

Abstract Optical frequency comb (OFC) sources, for their highly desirable properties, they have revolutionized a wide range of applications specifically orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system. OFC sources based on femtosecond erbium fiber laser has emerged as the most commonly used in many applications owing to their advantages of low cost, robustness, compactness, high performance, and flexibility. Here, 300 fs soliton mode-locked pulses were achieved using erbium fiber oscillator based on an efficient Graphene saturable absorber and an external all-fiber pulse compressor consisted of erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and 200 m long single-mode fiber (SMF). The proposed system works with a central wavelength of 1557 nm at the desirable communication band. The output power of the system and its corresponding pulse energy were 9.29 mW and 1.858 nJ, respectively, at a maximum pump power of 92.6 mW. The designed system is entirely fiber based, with no free-space optics and uses only standard telecommunication equipment. The results of this experiment demonstrate that the simple design of mode-locked fiber oscillator with an external compressor can provide a compact, portable, robust, reliable and high-performance femtoseconds frequency comb.