High repetition rate fiber and integrated waveguide femtosecond lasers

Femtosecond lasers and the development of frequency combs have revolutionized multiple fields like metrology, spectroscopy, medical diagnostics and optical communications. However, to enable wider adoption of the technology and new applications like photonic sampling, optical arbitrary waveform generation or the calibration of astronomical spectrographs, multi-GHz repetition rate femtosecond lasers with robust performance metrics, low cost, and a compact footprint are highly desirable. In this thesis, different approaches to develop GHz mode-locked laser systems at telecommunication wavelengths are discussed and current achievements presented. Design aspects for constructing a long-term stable and compact fiber laser with 187 fs short pulses at a repetition rate of 1 GHz are covered. In order to scale the repetition rate into the multi- GHz regime, coherent pulse interleaving in novel thermally tunable waveguide interleavers is demonstrated at 10 GHz. A femtosecond erbium-doped waveguide laser is developed at GHz repetition rates and important design guidelines are provided. As saturable Bragg reflectors are crucial in all of the described systems to enable mode-locking, saturable absorber optimization is discussed and their optical performance compared. Thus, this research paves the way for compact, affordable high repetition rate fiber lasers and monolithically integrated femtosecond laser sources which can be combined on-chip with additional functionalities to develop novel photonic systems with impact on spectroscopy, sensing, telecommunications and biomedical applications.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Sander, Michelle Y. (Michelle Yen-Ling)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Erich P. Ippen and Franz X. Kärtner

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/75647

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/75647