Electrically tunable Yb-doped fiber laser based on a liquid crystal photonic bandgap fiber device

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 tunable liquid crystal photonic bandgap fiber device with an ytterbium-doped photonic crystal fiber. We fabricate an all-spliced laser cavity based on the 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. (c) 2010 Optical Society of America