Tunable fiber-optic parametric oscillator

We report operation of a tunable optical parametric oscillator that employs a nonlinear-fiber Sagnac interferometer as a parametric amplifier. The amp lifier, which consists primarily of dispersion-shifted fiber that has zero dispersion at 1538 nm, is synchronously pumped with 7.7-ps pulses at 1539 n m. The wide bandwidth of the parametric gain permits tuning of the output s ignal pulses over a 40-nm range centered on the pump wavelength. The Sagnac interferometer decouples the pump wave from the oscillator cavity while a bandpass filter in the cavity transmits only the signal wave, thereby creat ing a singly resonant parametric oscillator that is phase insensitive. Wher eas we demonstrate tuning over almost the entire bandwidth of Er-doped-fibe r amplifiers, one could construct a similar device that operates near the 1 310-nm zero-dispersion wavelength of standard telecommunication fiber. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America.