Abstract

Mode-locked Er-fiber lasers are potentially important sources of ultrashort pulses in the 1.5-µm spectral region for applications in multigabit-per-second fiber systems. The duration and stability of the pulses generated from such lasers are primarily determined by the average group-delay dispersion (GDD) within the laser cavity.¹ Here, we present, for the first time to our knowledge, an actively-mode-locked Er-fiber laser that makes use of a chirped in-fiber Bragg reflection grating forming one of the cavity end mirrors. With this configuration, several advantageous issues are addressed: (a) the mean cavity dispersion can be controlled independently of the laser cavity length; (b) both dispersion regimes are easily accessible by simply reversing the grating orientation; (c) active mode locking allows synchronization of the laser to an external clock, and self-dispersion tuning means the laser should stay locked to the clock frequency.²

© 1995 Optical Society of America