250-GHz Passive Harmonic Mode-Locked Er-Doped Fiber Laser by Dissipative Four-Wave Mixing With Silicon-Based Micro-Ring

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a 250-GHz high-repetition-rate mode-locked Er-doped fiber laser, which utilizes a silicon micro-ring resonator (SMRR). The SMRR acts as an optical comb filter to help achieve passive mode-locking through the dissipative four-wave-mixing effect induced by a piece of high nonlinear fiber. A short section of polarization-maintaining fiber is inserted in the cavity to induce birefringence filtering to significantly enhance the stability of the proposed laser through the combined effects of optical filtering and nonlinear spectral broadening. The laser can operate about 2 and 6 nm in the case of 1.48-ps and 875-fs output pulsewidth, with 3-dB bandwidth, respectively. The laser can remain mode locked, during our measurement time, without any cavity length or temperature feedback control.