Stabilized 51-wavelength erbium-doped fiber ring laser based on high nonlinear fiber

A multi-wavelength fiber laser source is demonstrated with a high power erbium-doped fiber amplifier as the gain medium. In order to alleviate the mode competition, a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) is inserted in the ring cavity to provide nonlinear effects. A fiber Fabry-Perot filter (FFPF) is incorporated in the ring cavity serving as a comb filter. The comparison between HNLF with different length is discussed. Fifty one simultaneous lasing wavelengths within 3 dB uniformity are observed with channel spacing of 25 GHz and a signal to noise ratio of similar to 48 dB. Moreover, these stable multi-carriers light source is a promising candidate for high capacity optical communication system, such as coherent dense-wavelength-multiplexing (DWDM) in our project. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.