Influence of XPM in All-PM Fiber Oscillators Mode-Locked Using NPE in Linear Self-Stabilized Fiber Interferometers

Mode-locked fiber oscillators enable many applications such as frequency metrology and timing distribution. In recent years, all-PM fiber oscillators based on nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (NALM) attracted large attention due to their environmental stability combined with excellent noise performance. As less known alternative to NALM lasers, all-PM cavity configurations can be realized with a linear self-stabilized fiber interferometer (LFI) [1] which enable e.g., the implementation of pulse dividers for efficient energy scaling [2]. In this work, we numerically investigate the influence of cross-phase modulation (XPM) between the co-propagating orthogonal polarization modes on the stability of LFI mode-locked fiber lasers. A compact numerical model based on coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations and rate equations is applied to compare the mode-locked steady-states with and without XPM.