Abstract

Paper summary: Multi-wavelength erbium-doped fiber lasers have drawn considerable attention in the past two decades because of their potential applications in dense wavelength division multiplexing communication fiber optics sensors, spectroscopy and optics testing instruments. To date, various schemes have been proposed to realize multi-wavelength generation in erbium-doped fiber lasers including employed a multimode fiber Bragg grating (MM-FBG) for multi-wavelength operation, or incorporated dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF) and digital micromirror device. However, due to the drawbacks of complex and costly of those designs, we obtained multi-wavelength lasing outputs based on wavelength-dependent loss with polarization of high performance. In order to further explain the result of switchable multi-wavelength and optimize the ring laser, we have experimentally researched with the coupling ratio and the laser output wavelength. In fact, the coupling ratio is a factor that must be kept in mind with regard to some applications because of the potential drawbacks it may cause for the behavior of the systems and the devices.

In this paper, single-wavelength, dual-wavelength and three-wavelength were obtained through the polarization controller (PC) respectively. Simultaneously, we obtained the relationship between the laser output wavelength and different coupling ratios of the couplers (10/90, 20/80, 30/70, 40/60 and 50:50) in multi-wavelength erbium-doped fiber laser.

© 2012 Optical Society of America