
- High Power Laser Science and Engineering
- Vol. 8, Issue 4, 04000e32 (2020)
Abstract
1 Introduction
Mid-infrared (mid-IR) laser sources are now becoming enabling tools for cutting-edge applications, including greenhouse gas sensing[
Benefitting from the development of dual-comb technology, high-speed comb-tooth-resolved broadband mid-IR dual-comb spectroscopy (DCS) has been presented[
In this letter, we report on a mid-IR comb based on an NIR system. The NIR system includes an Yb:fiber comb and an Yb fiber chirped pulse amplifier (CPA) emits a pulse train with a 4 W average power and a 194 fs pulse duration. The NIR source is spilt into two beams as the signal and pump pulses of DFG. The spectrum of the signal pulse is nonlinearly broadened in a piece of HNLF with anomalous dispersion. The pump and signal pulses are focused into periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) for DFG. The mid-IR comb has a tunable spectrum from 2.7 to 4.0 μm and a maximum average power of 250 mW. To confirm the noise source, we measured the noise of each module and analyzed the noise source. This work has the potential to develop low-noise mid-IR combs, which may be applied in high-coherence DCS.
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2 Experimental setup
Figure 1.Schematic of the mid-IR comb. The mode-locked fiber oscillator serves as an NIR comb whose repetition rate is locked at 75 MHz. The CPA with two-stage fiber amplifiers scales the average power to 6.7 W. After the compressor, the system emits a pulse train with an average power of 4 W and a pulse duration of 194 fs, which corresponds to a pulse energy of 53 nJ. In the DFG module, the mid-IR pulse laser is generated in the PPLN by quasi-phase matching. SM LD, single-mode laser diode; YDF, Yb-doped fiber; WDM, wavelength division multiplexer; Col, collimator; FR, Faraday rotator; PBS, polarization beam splitter; ISO, isolator; MM LD, multimode laser diode; DC-YDF, double-cladding Yb-doped fiber; PCF, photonic crystal fiber; DM, dichroic mirror; PPLN, periodically poled lithium niobate.
Figure 2.Characterization of the chirped pulse amplification. (a) Normalized optical spectrum of NIR oscillator (blue curve) and amplified pulse (green line), centered at 1030 and 1038 nm with a spectral width of 30 and 12 nm, respectively. (b) Measured autocorrelation trace (blue line) of the amplified pulse with corresponding sech fitting (dotted green line).
3 Results and discussion
The NIR ultrafast pulse source is a home-made PM Yb-doped fiber laser based on a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror. By tuning the intracavity grating pair, the net dispersion of the cavity is controlled to near zero for low intrinsic phase noise[
Figure 3.(a) The spectrum of the broadened signal laser after a long-pass filter at 1100 nm. (b) The spectrum and corresponding average power of the mid-IR comb. The mid-IR comb has a tunable coverage of 2.7–4.0 μm. The average powers are 30, 130, 190, 240, 250, and 187 mW centered at 2.7, 3.0, 3.3, 3.5, 3.7, and 4.0 μm, respectively.
We optimize the conversion efficiency of quasi-phase matching by adjusting the optical delay line. The mid-IR comb is collimated by an uncoated CaF2 lens with a focal length of 75 mm. A 3 mm thick Ge filter separates the mid-IR comb from the pump and signal lasers. The spectral, temporal, long-term frequency stabilization and phase noise performances were measured to characterize the mid-IR comb. The spectral coverage of the mid-IR comb was measured by a Fourier transform spectrometer as shown in
Figure 4.The autocorrelation of mid-IR pulse at 3.5 μm. The pulse duration is 174 fs with Gaussian fitting.
Figure 5.(a) Phase noise PSD and (b) relative intensity noise (RIN) of the repetition rate signal corresponding to NIR comb (origin), CPA (green), and mid-IR comb at 3.5 μm (blue).
Therefore, the phase noise sources in this system are the environmental noise at low frequency and ASE-induced quantum noise at high frequency from the amplifier chain and nonlinear spectral broadening. The RIN sources are the environmental noise, pump noise of the amplifier, unstable supercontinuum generation, and quantum noise. For further applications in high-coherence DCS, the feedback control system, environmental isolation, power fluctuations of the pump laser, ASE suppression, and spectrum broadening need to be improved to reduce the phase noise of the mid-IR comb.
Figure 6.(a) The measured repetition rate stability of NIR comb (blue) and mid-IR comb (orange) for 3 h. (b) The Allan variance of the NIR comb (blue) and mid-IR comb (orange).
4 Conclusions
A mid-IR comb with tunable spectrum from 2.7 to 4.0 μm has been achieved by DFG. The maximum average power is 250 mW, which has been obtained at a central wavelength of 3.7 μm with an FWHM of 300 nm. By controlling the frequency and optimizing this system structure, this mid-IR comb system exhibits long-term frequency stability. The phase noise source has been analyzed by comparing the noise variation of Yb:fiber comb, CPA module, and mid-IR comb. Except for the intrinsic phase noise of the NIR comb, environmental noise at low frequency and quantum noise at high frequency from the amplifier chain and nonlinear spectral broadening are the additional noise source. Further measures, which consist of a precise feedback control system, good environmental isolation, suppression of the ASE, and so forth, will be taken to develop low-noise mid-IR combs in our future work for high-resolution spectroscopy in the mid-IR region.
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