Tunable and Switchable Fiber Ring Laser Among Four Wavelengths With Ultranarrow Wavelength Spacing Using a Quadruple-Transmission-Band Fiber Bragg Grating Filter

Four pi-phase shifts are introduced in a uniform fiber Bragg grating (FBG) structure to realize a quadruple-transmission-band filter with ultranarrow 40-pm wavelength spacing. Four separate single-wavelength lasings at 1552.60, 1552.63, 1552.67, and 1552.71 nm, and three pairs of dual-wavelength lasings among above four wavelengths, are achieved stably by incorporating the quadruple-transmission-band FBG filter in a fiber ring cavity with a tunable uniform FBG acting as coarse frequency selection. This new kind of laser will be very useful in applications requiring closely spaced and tunable single- or dual-wavelength components