A Q-switched, mode-locked fiber laser

employing subharmonic cavity modulation

You Min Chang, Junsu Lee, and Ju Han Lee*
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Seoul, Seoul 130-743, South Korea
*
j.h.lee@ieee.org

Abstract: We present a new and simple approach for the generation of Q-

switched, mode-locked pulses from a laser cavity. The approach is based on
cavity loss modulation that employs a subharmonic frequency of the
fundamental intermode frequency spacing. A range of experiments have
been carried out using an erbium-doped fiber-based ring cavity laser in
order to verify that this simple approach can readily produce high quality Q-
switched, mode-locked pulses. An active tuning of the Q-switched envelope
repetition rate is also shown to be easily achievable by adjusting the order of
the applied subharmonic frequency.
© 2011 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (060.3510) Lasers, fiber; (140.3540) Lasers, Q-switched; (140.4050) Mode-locked
lasers.

References and links

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9. S. Zhao, G. Li, D. Li, K. Yang, Y. Li, M. Li, T. Li, G. Zhang, and K. Cheng, “Numerical simulation of dual-loss-
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#157255 - $15.00 USD Received 31 Oct 2011; revised 29 Nov 2011; accepted 30 Nov 2011; published 14 Dec 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 19 December 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 27 / OPTICS EXPRESS 26627
17. Y. M. Chang, J. Lee, Y. M. Jhon, and J. H. Lee, “Active Q-switching in an erbium-doped fiber laser using an
ultrafast silicon-based variable optical attenuator,” Opt. Express (under revision for final decision, Oct. 2011).
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1. Introduction
Ultra-short pulse lasers have drawn great technical interest in recent years due to their wide
use in a variety of applications, such as high speed optical communications [1], biomedical
imaging [2], and material processing [3]. The mode-locking technique is commonly used to
obtain short pulses from a laser cavity. Through the locking of the relative phases of the
multiple lasing modes by modulating the loss (or gain) of the laser at a frequency of an integer
multiple of the fundamental intermode frequency spacing, the independent, longitudinal
modes are forced into a phase coherence. The coherent multiple lasing modes then manifest
themselves into a well-defined temporal pulse form. Mode-locking techniques can be
classified into two categories: passive and active. Passive mode-locking uses nonlinear optical
effects, such as nonlinear amplifying loop mirror [4], saturable absorption [5] and nonlinear
polarization rotation [6], whereas active mode-locking uses external beam modulation devices
to ensure the phase locking of each mode [7].
Recently, a great deal of attention has been paid to the generation of bursts of ultra-short
pulses as opposed to continuous pulses through the use of a special technique called “Q-
switched mode-locking”. Q-switched, mode-locked pulses are known to produce a higher
peak power than continuous pulses, provided that the same average optical power is used. Q-
switched mode-locking is usually realized by superimposing a Q-switched envelope on top of
the continuous mode-locked pulses. The simplest scheme is based on the combined use of a
passive mode-locker and an active Q switch, wherein the passive mode locker produces
mode-locked short pulses and an acousto-optic Q-switch adds a temporal envelope to the
pulses [8–10]. The use of a single acousto-optic modulator that plays the double role of mode-
locking and Q-switching, has recently been presented [11,12] as an advanced approach.
Furthermore, a pure passive scheme based on a single saturable absorber has also been
presented [13–15]. Using this scheme it was shown that Q-switched, mode-locked pulses
could be obtained under the condition of an intracavity pulse energy being less than a critical
stability level.
In this paper we present a new and simple approach for the generation of Q-switched,
mode-locked pulses from a laser cavity. The approach is based on cavity loss modulation at a
subharmonic frequency of the fundamental intermode frequency spacing. Through a range of
experiments with an erbium-doped fiber (EDF)-based ring cavity laser, it has been verified
that this simple approach can readily produce high quality Q-switched, mode-locked pulses. It
is shown that the active control of the Q-switched envelope repetition rate is easily achievable
by adjusting the order of the applied subharmonic frequency. It is also shown that the peak
optical power of the Q-switched, mode-locked pulses can reach up to a level ~14 times larger
than that found for the continuous fundamental-order mode-locked pulses generated from the
same cavity.
2. Experiment setup
The schematic of our Q-switched, mode-locked EDF laser is shown in Fig. 1(a). The fiber
laser was constructed by using a simple ring cavity in which a 3-m-long EDF with a peak
absorption of 20 dB/m at 1530 nm was used as the gain medium. The EDF was pumped by a
980-nm pump laser diode; the pump power was rated at 50 mW. An isolator and a
polarization controller (PC) were incorporated into the cavity in order to ensure a
unidirectional beam oscillation and for polarization adjustment. A 0.5-nm bandpass filter was
inserted into the cavity to eliminate the background amplified spontaneous emission (ASE)
noise as well as to determine the lasing wavelength. The laser output was extracted from the
ring cavity by a 90:10 fiber coupler, which fed 90% of the oscillated light power back into the

#157255 - $15.00 USD Received 31 Oct 2011; revised 29 Nov 2011; accepted 30 Nov 2011; published 14 Dec 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 19 December 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 27 / OPTICS EXPRESS 26628
EDF via a silicon-based variable optical attenuator (VOA). The laser output was monitored by
a 16-GHz real-time digital oscilloscope (Tektronix, DSA71604C) using a sampling rate of
100 GS/s and an InGaAs photodetector with a bandwidth of 20 GHz in order to monitor the
temporal shapes of both the Q-switched envelope and the mode-locked pulses. The temporal
resolution of the measurement setup used in this particular experiment was ~60 ps. Figure
1(b) shows the measured optical spectrum of the laser output. The center-wavelength was
measured to be 1561.42 nm, however the 3-dB bandwidth measurement was limited by the
resolution bandwidth (0.02 nm) of the optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) used in this
experiment.
Erbium Doped Fiber 0
2.9m Polarization
(a) Optical Controller -10 (b)
Isolator
-20
Tunable Filter

Power (dBm)
(0.5 nm) -30
WDM
980/1550 -40
Coupler -50
Pump LD Si-based, Fast
980 nm Variable Optical Attenuator
90 10 -60

-70
Output
-80
Signal 1559 1560 1561 1562 1563
Generator Wavelength (nm)

Fig. 1. (a) The laser schematic. (b) The measured optical spectrum of the output pulses.

In order to apply the loss modulation to the laser cavity an ultrafast VOA based on a
silicon p-i-n diode built on a silicon optical waveguide was used [16]. We recently
demonstrated that this simple device could be readily used for the Q-switching of an erbium-
doped fiber (EDF) laser [17]. The ultrafast Si-based VOA used in this experiment is
commercially available (Kotura, UltraVOA). Further details regarding this device are fully
described in [16].
40
Electrical Signal
35
(a) (b) Optical Signal
Electrical Current (a.u.)

Optical Intensity (a.u.)

30
Attenuation (dB)

25

20

15

10

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4

Current (mA) Time (µs)

Fig. 2. (a) The measured optical attenuation v.s. the driving current curve of the VOA. (b) The
measured oscilloscope traces of the applied sinusoidal electrical signal and their corresponding
modulated optical beam at a frequency of 490 kHz through the VOA.

Figure 2(a) shows the measured optical attenuation of the device as a function of the
applied forward-biased current. We operated the VOA by applying a sinusoidal electrical
signal with a peak-to-peak current of ~50 mA. Figure 2(b) shows the oscilloscope traces of the
applied sinusoidal electrical signal and their corresponding modulated optical beam at a VOA
frequency of 490 kHz. The modulated optical beam exhibited a square-like waveform rather
than a sinusoidal one due to its nonlinear attenuation curve, as shown in Fig. 2(a).

#157255 - $15.00 USD Received 31 Oct 2011; revised 29 Nov 2011; accepted 30 Nov 2011; published 14 Dec 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 19 December 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 27 / OPTICS EXPRESS 26629
3. Experimental results
We first applied the loss modulation to the cavity at the fundamental intermode spacing
frequency in order to ensure that the generation of stable fundamental-order, mode-locked
pulses occurred. Figure 3(a) shows the oscilloscope trace of the output pulse train emitted
from the fundamental-order, mode-locked laser; a magnified view is shown in Fig. 3(b). The
measured pulse spacing and pulse width were measured to be ~102 ns and ~260 ps,
respectively. The temporal width measurement was carried out with the high speed real-time
oscilloscope rather than an autocorrelator, since the few hundred picosecond pulse width
exceeded the measurement window of the autocorrelator available in our laboratory. The side
lobes seen in Fig. 3(b) are attributable to the modulated background ASE, which would be
substantially reduced by using a bandpass filter with a narrower a bandwidth within the
cavity.

0.6
(a) 1.0
(b)

Normalized Intensity (a.u.)

0.5
0.8
Intensity (a.u.)

0.4
~260 ps
0.6
0.3

0.2 0.4

0.1 0.2

0.0
0.0
-500 -400 -300 -200 -100 0 100 200 300 400 500 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5

Time (ns) Time (ns)

Fig. 3. (a) The measured oscilloscope traces of the output optical pulses from a laser cavity
with its loss modulation at a frequency of the fundamental intermode spacing and (b) a
magnified view.
0.30 0.30

m= 5 m = 10
0.25 0.25

0.20 0.20
Intensity (a.u.)

Intensity (a.u.)

0.15 0.15

0.10 0.10

0.05 0.05

0.00 0.00

-1000 -750 -500 -250 0 250 500 750 1000 -1000 -750 -500 -250 0 250 500 750 1000

Time (ns) Time (ns)

0.30 0.30

m = 30 m = 60
0.25 0.25

0.20 0.20
Intensity (a.u.)

Intensity (a.u.)

0.15 0.15

0.10 0.10

0.05 0.05

0.00 0.00

-1000 -750 -500 -250 0 250 500 750 1000 -1000 -750 -500 -250 0 250 500 750 1000

Time (ns) Time (ns)

Fig. 4. The measured oscilloscope traces of the output pulse trains for various orders (m) of the
subharmonics. The fitting curves for the Q-switched envelopes are also shown.

We next monitored the temporal shape variation of the output pulses caused by changing
the modulation frequency from its fundamental intermode spacing to its subharmonics. Figure

#157255 - $15.00 USD Received 31 Oct 2011; revised 29 Nov 2011; accepted 30 Nov 2011; published 14 Dec 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 19 December 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 27 / OPTICS EXPRESS 26630
4 shows the oscilloscope traces of the output pulse trains for various orders (m) of the
subharmonics, wherein the fitting curves for the Q-switched envelope are also shown. The Q-
switched envelope fitting curves were obtained through the use of the following well-known
equation [18].
a
P (t ) = 2
(1)
( exp (1.76 ∗ t / t ) + exp ( −1.76 ∗ t / t ) )
1 2

where a is the scaling factor. t1 and t2 represent the rise and fall time of the Q-switched
envelope, respectively. It is clearly evident from the figure that a Q-switched envelope
appears on top of the mode-locked pulses when the modulation frequency is a subharmonic.
The background level that appears at the subharmonic orders larger than 10, could be
attributed to the periodic, substantial emission of erbium ASE in the transient mode. The
erbium fiber laser seemed to be operating in the steady-state mode until m = 10 and then turn
into the transient mode. Unlike the steady-state mode, non-negligible photons contribute to
instantaneous ASE emission in the transient mode.
In order to further confirm the existence of both the Q-switching and mode-locking effect
we carried out an electrical spectrum measurement of the output pulses under a subharmonic
order of 20. Figure 5(a) shows the oscilloscope trace of the output pulses; Fig. 5(b) shows
their electrical spectrum. The frequency peak of the mode-locked pulses at a frequency of
9.806 MHz is clearly illustrated along with the two side frequency components of the Q-
switched envelope at a frequency of 490 kHz. This electrical spectrum indicates that an
amplitude modulation at a frequency of 490 kHz was imposed onto the continuous 9.806 MHz
mode-locked pulse train.
0.6

0.5
(a) (b) Fundamental Frequency (9.806 MHz)

490 kHz
Power (5 dB/div)

490 kHz
0.4
Intensity (a.u.)

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.0

-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 9.2 9.4 9.6 9.8 10.0 10.2 10.4

Time (µs) Frequency (MHz)

Fig. 5. (a) The measured oscilloscope trace of the output pulses at m = 20 and the fitting curves
for the Q-switched envelopes are also shown. (b) Their electrical spectrum with a resolution
bandwidth of 30 Hz.

Finally, we measured the variation of the output pulse characteristics, such as average
optical power, Q-switched envelope width, pulse width, and main pulse peak power that
occurred as we increased the subharmonic order. The main pulse is defined as the pulse that
possesses the highest peak power within the Q-switched envelope. The peak power was
estimated by curve-fitting of both the Q-switched envelope and the mode-locked pulses from
the measured averaged optical power. The results are summarized in Fig. 6.
The average optical power of the output pulses was observed to decrease at first when the
subharmonic order was enlarged, and then reached a minimum at the subharmonic order of
10. Past the subharmonic order of 10 the average power continuously increased and was
observed to saturate at the subharmonic of ~35. The saturated average optical power was
equivalent to that of the fundamental-order, mode-locked pulses. As mentioned above, the
erbium fiber laser seemed to be in the steady-state mode until m = 10 and then turn into the
transient mode. In the steady-state mode the cavity loss modulation induces output power loss.

#157255 - $15.00 USD Received 31 Oct 2011; revised 29 Nov 2011; accepted 30 Nov 2011; published 14 Dec 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 19 December 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 27 / OPTICS EXPRESS 26631
This is evident from the average power level decrease at m=5 and 10 in Fig. 6(a). On the other
hand, in the transient mode the cavity loss modulation induces Q-switching phenomenon,
which is associated with transient gain build-up and photon emission process. In this case, the
increase of the subharmonic order leads to larger gain build-up and photon emission times,
which result in higher average output power and larger Q-switched envelope width as shown
in Figs. 6(a) and 6(b).
The temporal width of the output pulses were observed to decrease with an increase in the
subharmonic order, whereas that of the Q-switched envelope singularly increased, as shown in
Figs. 6(b) and 6(c). A minimum pulse width of ~100 ps, which was ~2.5 times narrower than
that of the fundamental-order, mode-locked pulses was observed at the subharmonic order of
45. The pulse width variation as a function of the subharmonic order can be understood as
optical power-dependent soliton pulse compression, since the laser cavity has anomalous
dispersion at the lasing wavelength of 1561.42 nm. As shown in Fig. 6(d) the pulse peak
power suddenly decreases when the subharmonic order is changed from m=1 to 5. The
suddenly lowered peak power causes temporal width broadening of the solitonic mode-locked
pulses at m=5. Further increase of the subharmonic order leads to higher-order soliton pulse
compression, which results in the two relative minimum widths at m=20 and 45. This
explanation needs to be confirmed through a theoretical work.
The estimated peak power of the main pulse was found to increase and reached up to ~1.4
W, ~14 times greater than that found for the fundamental-order, mode-locked pulses, fully
meeting our expectations, as shown in Fig. 6(d).

0.24 1200
Fundamental Mode-locking
m=1
0.20 1000
Average Power (mW)

0.16 800
Envelope (ns)

0.12 600

0.08 400

0.04 (a) 200 (b)

0.00 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Subharmonic Order (m) Subharmonic Order (m)

600 1.4

500 1.2

1.0
Pulse Width (ps)

Peak Power (W)

400
0.8
300 Fundamental Mode-locking
0.6 m=1
200
(c) 0.4 (d)
100 0.2
Fundamental Mode-locking
m=1
0 0.0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Subharmonic Order (m) Subharmonic Order (m)

Fig. 6. The variation of the output pulse characteristics with an increasing subharmonic order:
(a) average optical power, (b) Q-switched envelope width, (c) main pulse width, and (d) main
pulse peak power.

4. Conclusion
We have demonstrated a novel method for the generation of Q-switched, mode-locked pulses
from a laser cavity based on the cavity loss modulation at a subharmonic frequency of the

#157255 - $15.00 USD Received 31 Oct 2011; revised 29 Nov 2011; accepted 30 Nov 2011; published 14 Dec 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 19 December 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 27 / OPTICS EXPRESS 26632
fundamental intermode frequency spacing. It has been shown that this approach produces high
quality Q-switched, mode-locked pulses by performing a range of experiments with an EDF
ring cavity laser. Since an active tuning of the Q-switched envelope repetition rate is readily
possible through a simple adjustment of the order of the applied subharmonic frequency, we
believe that this approach can be a powerful tool in the generation of repetition rate
controllable bursts of ultra-short pulses.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea grant funded
by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEST), Republic of Korea (No.
2011-0028978).

#157255 - $15.00 USD Received 31 Oct 2011; revised 29 Nov 2011; accepted 30 Nov 2011; published 14 Dec 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 19 December 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 27 / OPTICS EXPRESS 26633