120 nm Bandwidth noise-like pulse generation in an erbium-doped fiber laser

We report on the generation of noise-like pulses with up to 120 nm bandwidth in a passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber ring laser. By inserting a segment of slightly normal dispersion fiber in a mode-locked fiber laser cavity, we found that the spectrum of the noise-like pulse emission of the laser can be significantly broadened as a result of the four-wave-mixing and the soliton self-frequency shift effects in the inserted fiber.