A. Mayer,
W. Grosinger,
J. Fellinger,
G. Winkler,
L. Perner,
S. Droste,
S. Salman,
C. Li,
C. Heyl,
I. Hartl,
and O. Heckl
Flexible all-PM NALM Yb:fiber laser design for frequency comb applications: Operation regimes and their noise properties
Opt. Express, 28 :18946 ( 2020)
Flexible all-PM NALM Yb:fiber laser design for frequency comb applications: Operation regimes and their noise properties
Opt. Express, 28 :18946 ( 2020)
Abstract:
We present a flexible all-polarization-maintaining (PM) mode-locked ytterbium (Yb):fiber laser based on a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (NALM). In addition to providing detailed design considerations, we discuss the different operation regimes accessible by this versatile laser architecture and experimentally analyze five representative mode-locking states. These five states were obtained in a 78-MHz configuration at different intracavity group delay dispersion (GDD) values ranging from anomalous (-0.035 ps2) to normal (+0.015 ps2). We put a particular focus on the characterization of the intensity noise as well as the free-running linewidth of the carrier-envelope-offset (CEO) frequency as a function of the different operation regimes. We observe that operation points far from the spontaneous emission peak of Yb (~1030 nm) and close to zero intracavity dispersion can be found, where the influence of pump noise is strongly suppressed. For such an operation point, we show that a CEO linewidth of less than 10-kHz at 1 s integration can be obtained without any active stabilization.