Abstract
A novel, simple, and short cavity design of single longitudinal mode
(SLM) tunable erbium-doped fiber ring laser using a graphene-based saturable
absorber is proposed and demonstrated as a tunable signal source. The SLM
output is then mixed with another output signal from a tunable laser source
(TLS) to generate tunable radio frequency (RF) signals. The tunable SLM fiber
ring laser uses a short length of 1 m highly doped erbium-doped fiber as the
gain medium. Graphene is used as a saturable absorber to generate the SLM
operation, as opposed to the commonly used unpumped erbium-doped fiber. The
tuning range of the fiber ring laser is determined by a tunable fiber Bragg
grating, which can be tuned from 1547.88 to 1559.88 nm. A continuous wavelength
spacing tuning range of 0.020–0.050 nm is obtained between the output
of the SLM fiber ring laser and the TLS which is then mixed in a 6 GHz bandwidth
optical-to-electrical convertor. This generates a corresponding RF signal
of between 2.4 and 5.9 GHz with a low variation in output power. The current
RF signal generation is limited by the frequency bandwidth of the optical-to-electrical
convertor.
© 2012 IEEE
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