Investigation of a multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser employing a nonlinear high-birefringence fiber loop mirror

A room-temperature multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) based on a nonlinear high-birefringence fiber loop mirror (HiBi-FLM) is proposed and demonstrated. The nonlinear HiBi-FLM can induce not only wavelength-dependent loss (WDL) but also intensity-dependent loss (IDL). WDL and IDL can effectively suppress the mode competition caused by homogeneous gain broadening of the erbium-doped fiber (EDF), and ensure stable and uniform power distribution over wavelengths. As a result, up to 50-wavelength lasing operations with wavelength spacing of 0.8 nm, and more than 100-wavelength operations with wavelength spacing of 0.14 nm are achieved. The power distribution over the wavelengths is uniform, and the power fluctuation in each wavelength is smaller than 0.2 dB.