All polarization-maintaining, figure-of-9 dispersion-managed Er: fiber laser

In this paper, passively mode-locked all polarization-maintaining (PM) dispersion-managed erbium-doped figure-of-9 fiber oscillator based on a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (NALM) is demonstrated. The figure-of-9 fiber laser can generate 25.7-nm chirped-pulse at a center wavelength of 1550 nm with a repetition of 46.6 MHz, a pulse energy of 0.2 nJ, and a chirped pulse width of 571 fs. The laser output is then amplified by pre-chirped managed nonlinear amplification setup to 5 nJ and further compressed down to 167 fs. Compared to previous studies, the laser presented here has advantages of all-fiber structure, no Kelly sideband and wider bandwidth.