A MULTIWAVELENGTH FIBER RING-LASER EMPLOYING A PAIR OF SILICA-BASED ARRAYED-WAVE-GUIDE-GRATINGS

A multiwavelength fiber ring-laser employing a pair of silica-based ar rayed-waveguide-gratings (AWG's) is proposed to easily implement a sta ble multiwavelength operation for a variety of research needs. A fixed multiwavelength operation is available when the free-spectral-range ( FSR) of the AWG's is wide enough to cover the gain bandwidth of deploy ed erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA's). A tunable multiwavelength o peration is also available when the FSR is narrower than the gain band width. 15 channels with 1.6-nm spacing in the fix type, and five chann els with about 40-nm discretely tunable range at 1.4-nm spacing in the tunable type and almost 50-dB signal to amplified spontaneous emissio n (ASE) ratio in both types are demonstrated