HIGH-POWER SIDE-PUMPED PASSIVELY MODE-LOCKED ER-YB FIBER LASER

A side-pumped double-clad Er-Yb fiber laser passively mode-locked with a saturable absorber is demonstrated for the first time. Pumped with a power of 1 W from a broad-stripe diode laser, an environmentally sta ble cavity design produces positively chirped 3-ps pulses at a repetit ion rate of 30 MHz with an average output power of 50 mW, The pulses c an be linearly compressed to 330 fs in a length of negative dispersion fiber, whereas nonlinear compression in standard telecom fibers yield s 130-fs pulses with pulse energies of 1.2 nJ.