CHARACTERIZATION OF NONLINEAR SWITCHING IN A FIGURE-OF-8 FIBER LASER USING FREQUENCY-RESOLVED OPTICAL GATING

The measurement technique of-frequency-resolved optical gating is appl ied to determine the nonlinear switching. characteristics of a passive ly modelocked figure-of-eight erbium-doped fiber laser, By completely characterizing the intensity and phase of the laser output pulses, the intracavity fields in the nonlinear amplifying loop mirror of the las er cavity are determined by numerical propagation using the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, Excellent switching of 95% can be achieved as a result of uniform phase characteristics developed by pulses propagatin g in the nonlinear amplifying loop mirror.