Control of fibre laser mode-locking by narrow-band Bragg gratings

Abstract

The use of narrow-band high-reflectivity fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) as end mirrors in a fibre laser cavity with passive mode-locking provided by a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) is investigated numerically. The FBG is found to control the energy range of stable mode-locking, which may be shifted far outside the regime of SESAM saturation by a suitable choice of FBG and cavity length. The pulse shape is controlled by the combined effects of FBG dispersion and self-phase modulation in the fibres, and a few ps pulses can be obtained with standard uniform FBGs. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.