We demonstrate electrical tunability of a fiber laser using a liquid crystal photonic bandgap fiber. Tuning of the laser is achieved by combining the wavelength filtering effect of a liquid crystal photonic bandgap fiber device with an ytterbium-doped photonic crystal fiber. We fabricate an all-spliced laser cavity based on a liquid crystal photonic bandgap fiber mounted on a silicon assembly, a pump/signal combiner with single-mode signal feed-through and an ytterbium-doped photonic crystal fiber. The laser cavity produces a single-mode output and is tuned in the range 1040- 1065 nm by applying an electric field to the silicon assembly.

Date Published: 17 February 2010
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7580, Fiber Lasers VII: Technology, Systems, and Applications, 75801D (17 February 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.841998

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7580:
Fiber Lasers VII: Technology, Systems, and Applications
Kanishka Tankala, Editor(s)