High Performance Tunable Dual-Wavelength Erbium-Doped Fiber Laser Implemented by Using Tapered Triple-Core Photonic Crystal Fiber

Based on tapered Triple-Core Photonic Crystal Fiber (TCPCF), a high performance tunable Dual-Wavelength Erbium-Doped Fiber Laser (DW-EDFL) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The mode-coupling among three cores of TCPCF appears periodically and becomes further enhanced in tapered TCPCF, which are beneficial to form a filter to select lasing wavelength. A series of tapered TCPCFs with different taper lengths are fabricated and inserted into tunable DW-EDFL as filters. Multiple groups of tunable dual-wavelength lasing outputs are achieved by using the tapered TCPCF filter with a waist diameter of 126 μm. The maximum tunable range can reach up to 14.36 nm and the side mode suppression ratio of all lasing outputs are above 52 dB. In addition, the tunable single- and triple-wavelength lasers are also obtained. The tunable single-wavelength laser has an excellent linear response to strain and can be applied to realize a high-sensitivity strain sensor with the highest strain sensitivity of -13.1 pm/με.