TY - JOUR
T1 - Ultrafast optics with a mode-locked erbium fiber laser in the undergraduate laboratory
AU - Upcraft, Daniel
AU - Schaffer, Andrew
AU - Fredrick, Connor
AU - Mohr, Daniel
AU - Parks, Nathan
AU - Thomas, Andrew
AU - Sievert, Ella
AU - Riedemann, Austin
AU - Hoyt, Chad W.
AU - Jones, R. Jason
N1 - Funding Information:
a)Current address: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. b)Current address: Honeywell, Golden Valley, Minnesota. c)Current address: University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado. d)Current address: Seagate, Bloomington, Minnesota. e)Electronic mail: [email protected]; Current address: Honeywell, Plymouth, Minnesota. 1Recent advanced laboratory conferences include (1) Lab Focus 1993, Boise State University, Boise, ID (1993) sponsored by the NSF through the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) (2) 2012 Conference on Laboratory Instruction Beyond the First Year of College, University of PA and Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA (2012) sponsored in part by the NSF, AAPT, APS (3) 2015 Conference on Laboratory Instruction Beyond the First Year, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, sponsored the NSF, AAPT. 2See <www.aapt.org/Resources> for “AAPT Recommendations for the Undergraduate Physics Laboratory Curriculum” (last accessed November, 2014). 3Benjamin M. Zwickl, Noah Finkelstein, and H. J. Lewandowski, “The process of transforming an advanced lab course: Goals, curriculum, and assessments,” Am. J. Phys. 81, 63–70 (2013). 4Anna Karelina and Eugenia Etkina, “Acting like a physicist: Student approach study to experimental design,” Phys. Rev. Spec. Top. 3, 020106 (2007). 5N. Holmes and D. Bonn, “Doing science or doing a lab? Engaging students with scientific reasoning during physics lab experiments,” in Proceedings of the Physics Education Research Conference (AIP Press, College Park, MD, 2013). 6Scott A. Diddams, “The evolving optical frequency comb [invited],” J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 27, B51–B62 (2010). 7T. D. Donnelly and Carl Grossman, “Ultrafast phenomena: A laboratory experiment for undergraduates,” Am. J. Phys. 66, 677–685 (1998). 8See supplementary material at https://www.scitation.org/doi/suppl/ 10.1119/10.0005890 for additional background material on linear and nonlinear propagation of pulses, autocorrelation, and the parallel grating dispersion compensator as well as parts lists to build the apparatus described in this work. 9J. Stanley, D. R. Dounas-Frazer, L. Kiepura, and H. J. Lewandowski, “Students’ ownership of projects in the upper-division physics instruc-tional laboratory setting,” in Physics Education Research Conference 2015, College Park, MD, 29-30 July 2015 (AIP Press, College Park, MD, 2015): available at https://www.compadre.org/per/perc/2015/ Detail.cfm?id=6336. 10J. Stanley, “Investigating student ownership of projects in upper-division physics laboratory courses,” in Proceedings of the American Physical Society March Meeting (American Physical Society, Baltimore, MD, 2016). 11Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer, Jacob T. Stanley, and H. J. Lewandowski, “Student ownership of projects in an upper-division optics laboratory course: A multiple case study of successful experiences,” Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 13, 020136 (2017). 12For example, OEQuest sells model FML-15-M for 12900 USD. 13K. Tamura, E. P. Ippen, H. A. Haus, and L. E. Nelson, “77-fs pulse genera-tion from a stretched-pulse mode-locked all-fiber ring laser,” Opt. Lett. 18, 1080–1082 (1993). 14K. Tamura, L. E. Nelson, H. A. Haus, and E. P. Ippen, “Soliton versus nonsoliton operation of fiber ring lasers,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 64, 149–151 (1994). 15Tsung-Han Wu, K. Kieu, N. Peyghambarian, and R. J. Jones, “Low noise erbium fiber fs frequency comb based on a tapered-fiber carbon nanotube design,” Opt. Express 19, 5313–5318 (2011). 16H. A. Haus, K. Tamura, L. E. Nelson, and E. P. Ippen, “Stretched-pulse additive pulse mode-locking in fiber ring lasers: Theory and experiment,” IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 31(3), 591–598 (1995). 17L. E. Nelson, D. J. Jones, K. Tamura, H. A. Haus, and E. P. Ippen, “Ultrashort-pulse fiber ring lasers,” Appl. Phys. B 65, 277–294 (1997). 18Govind P. Agrawal, Nonlinear Fiber Optics (Academic Press, San Diego, 1995). 19Bahaa E. A. Saleh and Malvin C. Teich, Fundamentals of Photonics, 2nd ed. (Wiley-Interscience, Hoboken, NJ, 2007). 20Rare Earth Doped Fiber Lasers and Amplifiers, 2nd ed., edited by Michel J. F. Digonnet (Marcel Dekker Inc., New York, 2001). 21Jean-Claude M. Diels, Joel J. Fontaine, Ian C. McMichael, and Francesco Simoni, “Control and measurement of ultrashort pulse shapes (in ampli-tude and phase) with femtosecond accuracy,” Appl. Opt. 24, 1270–1282 (1985). 22Jean-Claude Diels and Wolfgang Rudolph, Ultrashort Laser Pulse Phenomena (Academic, New York, 2006). 23Andrew M. Weiner, Ultrafast Optics (Wiley, New York, 2009). 24E. B. Treacy, “Compression of picosecond light pulses,” Phys. Lett. A 28, 34–35 (1968). 25R. L. Fork, C. H. Brito Cruz, P. C. Becker, and C. V. Shank, “Compression of optical pulses to six femtoseconds by using cubic phase compensation,” Opt. Lett. 12, 483–485 (1987). 26BATOP, for example, sells both semiconductor-based and carbon nano-tube based saturable absorbers. 27J. W. Nicholson, R. S. Windeler, and D. J. DiGiovanni, “Optically driven deposition of single-walled carbon-nanotube saturable absorbers on optical fiber end-faces,” Opt. Express 15, 9176–9183 (2007). 28L. C. Sinclair, J.-D. Deschênes, L. Sonderhouse, W. C. Swann, I. H. Khader, E. Baumann, N. R. Newbury, and I. Coddington, “Invited article: A compact optically coherent fiber frequency comb,” Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 081301 (2015). 29Yung-Hsiang Lin, Jui-Yung Lo, Wei-Hsuan Tseng, Chih-I. Wu, and Gong-Ru Lin, “Self-amplitude and self-phase modulation of the charcoal mode-locked erbium-doped fiber lasers,” Opt. Express 21, 25184–25196 (2013). 30Peter A. Krug, Mark G. Sceats, G. R. Atkins, S. C. Guy, and S. B. Poole, “Intermediate excited-state absorption in erbium-doped fiber strongly pumped at 980 nm,” Opt. Lett. 16, 1976–1978 (1991). 31K. W. Su, H. C. Lai, A. Li, Y. F. Chen, and K. F. Huang, “InAs/GaAs quantum-dot saturable absorber for a diode-pumped passively mode-locked Nd:YVO4 laser at 1342 nm,” Opt. Lett. 30, 1482–1484 (2005). 32S. M. J. Kelly, “Characteristic sideband instability of periodically ampli-fied average soliton,” Electron. Lett. 28, 806–807 (1992). 33H. A. Haus, C. V. Shank, and E. P. Ippen, “Shape of passively mode-locked laser pulses,” Opt. Commun. 15, 29–31 (1975).
Funding Information:
Funding for this undergraduate advanced laboratory project is provided by the National Science Foundation EIR No. 1208930. The authors appreciate assistance from Tsung-Han Wu.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Author(s).
PY - 2021/12/1
Y1 - 2021/12/1
N2 - We describe an ultrafast optics laboratory comprising a mode-locked erbium fiber laser, autocorrelation measurements, and a free-space parallel grating dispersion compensation apparatus. The gain spectrum of Er fiber provides a broad bandwidth capable of supporting sub-100 fs pulses centered near a wavelength of 1550 nm. The fiber laser design used here produces a train of pulses at a repetition rate of 55 MHz with pulse duration as short as 108 fs. The pulse duration is measured with a homebuilt autocorrelator using a simple Michelson interferometer that takes advantage of the two-photon nonlinear response of a common silicon photodiode. To compensate for temporal stretching of the short pulse due to group velocity dispersion in the fiber, an apparatus based on a pair of parallel gratings is used for pulse compression. A detailed part that lists in the supplementary material includes previously owned and common parts used by the telecommunications industry, which helps decrease costs of the laboratory. This provides a cost-effective way to introduce the principles of ultrafast optics to undergraduate laboratories.
AB - We describe an ultrafast optics laboratory comprising a mode-locked erbium fiber laser, autocorrelation measurements, and a free-space parallel grating dispersion compensation apparatus. The gain spectrum of Er fiber provides a broad bandwidth capable of supporting sub-100 fs pulses centered near a wavelength of 1550 nm. The fiber laser design used here produces a train of pulses at a repetition rate of 55 MHz with pulse duration as short as 108 fs. The pulse duration is measured with a homebuilt autocorrelator using a simple Michelson interferometer that takes advantage of the two-photon nonlinear response of a common silicon photodiode. To compensate for temporal stretching of the short pulse due to group velocity dispersion in the fiber, an apparatus based on a pair of parallel gratings is used for pulse compression. A detailed part that lists in the supplementary material includes previously owned and common parts used by the telecommunications industry, which helps decrease costs of the laboratory. This provides a cost-effective way to introduce the principles of ultrafast optics to undergraduate laboratories.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85120049776
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85120049776#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.1119/10.0005890
DO - 10.1119/10.0005890
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85120049776
SN - 0002-9505
VL - 89
SP - 1152
EP - 1160
JO - American Journal of Physics
JF - American Journal of Physics
IS - 12
ER -