Wide wavelength-tunable passive mode-locked Erbium-doped fiber laser with a SESAM

Abstract In this work we present a simple polarization-maintaining wavelength-tunable passive mode-locked Erbium-doped fiber laser with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as a mode locker. The cavity includes a Sagnac interferometer-based fiber optical loop mirror (FOLM) as a wide wavelength-tunable filter. Tunable mode-locking was experimentally achieved in the range of 1543.2 nm to 1569.5 nm by thermally adjustment of FOLM wavelength reflection. The output pulses have a repetition rate of 11.16 MHz with pulse duration about 0.9 ps. The experimental results were confirmed by numerical simulations.