Active stabilization of a higher-order mode-locked fiber laser operating at a pulse-repetition rate of 154 GHz.

ABSTRACT

We report stabilization of a higher-order mode-locked Er-fiber laser producing transform-limited 800-fs Gaussian pulses at a repetition rate of 154 GHz against variation of cavity length caused by ambient temperature fluctuation. We obtained an error signal suitable for active control of the cavity length and synchronization to a 38.4-GHz external clock by tailoring the chromatic dispersion of the ring laser cavity and using a feedback circuit based on balanced photodetection. The wavelength and the repetition rate of the stabilized laser could be tuned over ranges of 11 nm and ~100 MHz , respectively.