Soliton fiber laser with a hybrid saturable absorber

Abstract

We present an experimental study of a picosecond fiber soliton laser in which mode locking is achieved by the combined action of a multiple-quantum-well saturable absorber and a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror. In this configuration the multiple-quantum-well sample acts not only as a saturable absorber but also as a passive phase modulator, while the inclusion of a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror fixes the energy of the generated pulses. The laser stably operates at a repetition rate of 250 MHz with a timing jitter below 10 ps.