Systematic study of a thulium-doped all-polarization maintaining modelocked fiber laser from a low to high fundamental repetition rate

Abstract

In this work, we present an experimental and theoretical study of a passively modelocked all-fiber laser that fully retains polarization with a fundamental repetition rate ranging from 0.1 to 1 GHz. The whole cavity consists of a highly-Tm-doped fiber in tandem with a passive fiber, both with polarization-maintenance, with a dichroic mirror on one end and a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror on the other. We experimentally characterized the output of this laser, which emits a train of transform-limited sub-picosecond light pulses around the two microns. The high stability of this laser was also experimentally verified. Together with this, a detailed theoretical model was developed, confirming the experimental results.