Four-wavelength ultra-narrow linewidth fiber laser enabled by a figure-8 compound-ring-cavity filter and a polarization-managed four-channel filter

We propose and demonstrate a high performance four-wavelength erbium-doped fiber laser (4W-EDFL), enabled by a figure-8 compound-ring-cavity (F8-CRC) filter for single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) selection and a polarization-managed four-channel filter (PM-FCF) for defining lasing wavelengths. We introduce a novel methodology utilizing signal-flow graph combined with Mason's rule to analyze a CRC filter in general and apply it to obtain the important design parameters for the F8-CRC filter used in this paper. By combining the functions of the F8-CRC filter and the PM-FCF filter assisted by the enhanced polarization hole-burning and polarization dependent loss, we achieve the 4W-EDFL with fifteen lasing states, including four single-, six dual-, four tri- and one quad-wavelength lasing operations. In particular, all the four single-wavelength operations are in stable SLM oscillation, typically with a linewidth of =3 MHz and an output power fluctuation of <=+/-3.45%. In addition, all the six dual-wavelength operations have very similar performances, with the performance parameters close to those of the single-wavelength lasing operations. Finally, we achieve the wavelength spacing tuning of the dual-wavelength operations for the photonic generation of tunable microwave signals, and successfully obtain a signal at 23.10 GHz as a demonstration.