Compact 84 GHz passive mode-locked fiber laser using dual-fiber coupled fused-quartz microresonator

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a compact and portable-size 84-GHz passive mode-locked fiber laser, in which a dual-fiber coupled fused-quartz microresonator is employed as the intracavity optical comb filter as well as the optical nonlinear material for optical frequency comb generation. About eight coherent optical tones can be generated in the proposed fiber laser. The 20-dB bandwidth is larger than 588 GHz. The full-width halfmaximum pulse-width of the proposed laser is 2.5 ps. We also demonstrate the feasibility of using the proposed passive mode-locked fiber laser to carry a 5-Gbit/s on-off-keying signal and transmit over 20-km standard single mode fiber. A 7% forward error correction requirement can be achieved, showing the proposed fiber laser can be a potential candidate for fiber-wireless applications. (C) 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)