Multiwavelength Erbium-Doped Fiber Laser Employing Cavity Loss Modulation

A novel and simple multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser is proposed and demonstrated. The combination of a polarization scrambler and a polarizer is employed to induce polarization-dependent-loss modulation. The loss modulation induced multiwavelength lasing by alleviating the mode competition caused by homogeneous gain broadening of the erbium-doped fiber. As a result, 11-wavelength lasing operation with wavelength spacing of 0.8 nm has been achieved. The output power distribution is quite uniform and the power fluctuation of each wavelength is smaller than 0.6 dB.