Phase modulator birefringence effect on multibound soliton formation in an active mode-locked fiber laser (original) (raw)

Multibound solitons generated in an active mode-locked fiber ring resonator can be considered to offer some significant applications in the coding for optical packet transmission. Optical phase modulators (PMs) incorporated in such fiber ring resonators are fabricated in uniaxial birefringent crystal substrate and thus influence both polarized modes of a coupled linearly polarized mode from a weakly guiding fiber forming the ring. Thus there are two polarized rings in such a structure of the active mode-locked fiber ring resonators. They are coupled and interact with each other in the generation of multibound solitons. This paper thus studies the influence of two types of electrodes for phase modulation, lumped and traveling wave, in such birefringent fiber active ring resonators, and hence the transitional formation of multibound solitons. It is shown that there exist comblike spectral components in the ring cavity due to the birefringence property of the PM. Furthermore, the narrow free spectral range of the ring resonator limits the pulse shortening and hence the formation of the multibinding of solitons. Fig. 3. (Color online) Geometries of LiNbO 3 PMs-(a) X-cut and positions of electrodes and (b) Z-cut and positions of electrodes-for effective interaction.