Spacing-tunable multi-wavelength fiber laser based on cascaded four-wave mixing in highly nonlinear photonic-crystal fiber

A multi-wavelength fiber laser based on the cascaded four-wave mixing in highly-nonlinear photonic-crystal fiber is proposed and investigated. The cascade operation is initiated by two strong pump waves boosted by multi-mode pumping erbium/ytterbium co-doped double-cladding fiber amplification technique. A segment of highly-nonlinear near-zero-dispersion-flattened photonic crystal fiber is employed to induce highly efficient cascaded four-wave mixing. The wavelength spacing can be continuously tunable by stretching the fiber Bragg grating. Experimental results show that multiple wavelengths with a high optical side-mode suppression-ratio of > 30 dB are achieved. Furthermore, the proposed multi-wavelength fiber laser exhibits an excellent stability at room temperature.