Wavelength and pulse width programmable mode-locked Yb fiber laser

Abstract

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first demonstration of a mode-locked polarization-maintaining Yb fiber laser that incorporates a liquid-crystal-on-silicon-based electrically programmable filter into the cavity. The intracavity filter continuously tunes pulse characteristics, such as a wavelength tunable range of 1018–1065 nm and pulse width tunable range of 0.3–2.6 ps. Further, numerical simulations of the laser oscillator results were consistent with the experimental results and confirmed the mode-locked pulse generation regime. The proposed technique is expected to have great potential as a seed laser for multifunctional ultrashort-pulse lasers.