High Side-Mode Suppression Ratio Optical Pulses Generated From a Self-Seeded Fabry-Perot Laser Diode Locked by a Linear Erbium-Doped Fiber Laser

A new configuration of self-seeding scheme has been developed for wavelength-tunable optical pulse generation. In the system, an erbium-doped fiber laser is used to provide a strong wavelength seeding power and as a result, an extremely high side-mode suppression ratio of larger than 50 dB over the whole wavelength-tuning range of 13 nm can be obtained, with good pulse stability. When compared with other erbium-doped fiber amplifier configurations reported previously, the developed system exhibits higher pump efficiency and signal amplification capability. The system is simple, robust, and of low cost.