Ultrashort pulse generation in All-fiber Erbium-doped fiber cavity with thulium doped fiber saturable absorber

Generation of ultrashort pulses in an all-fiber Erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) cavity with doped fiber saturable absorber (DFSA) is demonstrated for the first time. The doped fiber saturable absorber is fabricated by a single-mode 12 cm-long thulium-doped fiber (TDF). The optical characteristic of TDF indicates a saturable absorption of 3.6 %, which indicates it's capability to function as a mode-locker. Continuous wave, mode-locked and combined-mode operations are observed sequentially with the increase of pump power. The mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser operates at 1568.2 nm with a pulse width of 2.27 ps. A mode-locked pulse train with a constant repetition rate of 0.99 MHz is obtained as the pump power increased from 96 mW to 178 mW. At the pump power of 178 mW, the maximum peak power and pulse energy are calculated as 1.75 kW and 3.93 nJ, respectively. The obtained pulse train is very robust with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 63 dB. The experimental results attest that utilizing doped fiber saturable absorber can achieve ultrashort pulses and possess the potentially increasable power of mode-locked operation in all-fiber lasers.