Nonlinear spectral tunability of pulsed fiber laser with semiconductor optical amplifier

Abstract

We examine spectral properties of radiation in the pulsed fiber lasers using the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as the gain medium. The complex light dynamics that result from the interplay between the fiber propagation effects in the cavity, the nonlinear effects in the SOA and spectral filtering, shift the generated radiation from the central wavelength of the filter. The resulting wavelength of the output radiation depends on the SOA pump power and the bandwidth of the intracavity filter. This offers the possibility of a spectral tunability of the generated pulses through nonlinear dynamics rather than the conventional use of a tunable filter.