Dynamic properties of a pulse-pumped fiber laser with a short, high-gain cavity

• A high-gain fiber laser using a short, heavily Er3+-doped fiber as the gain medium.
• The laser generates μs pulses at kHz∼one-shot rep rate w/o intracavity modulators.
• Pulses are tuned by adjusting a variable optical coupler and pump power’s modulation.
• Laser dynamics are analyzed by an adaptive-discrete-grid-finite-difference-method.
• The laser is flexible, cost-effective for fiber sensing and communication systems.

We demonstrate a pulsed high-gain all-fiber laser without intracavity modulators, where a short and heavily Erbium-doped fiber is used as the gain medium in a ring cavity. By pulsed-pumping this short high gain cavity and tuning an intracavity variable optical coupler, the laser generates optical pulses with a pulse-width of μs at a repetition rate in the order of kHz down to one-shot operation. Furthermore, dynamic properties of this laser are investigated theoretically based on a traveling-wave-model, in which an adaptive-discrete-grid-finite-difference-method is applied. The simulation results validate the experimental results. The demonstrated pulsed laser is compact, flexible and cost-effective, which will have great potential for applications in all-optical sensing and communication systems.