%0 Journal Article
%T High-Energy Passive Mode-Locking of Fiber Lasers
%A Edwin Ding
%A William H. Renninger
%A Frank W. Wise
%A Philippe Grelu
%A Eli Shlizerman
%A J. Nathan Kutz
%J International Journal of Optics
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/354156
%X Mode-locking refers to the generation of ultrashort optical pulses in laser systems. A comprehensive study of achieving high-energy pulses in a ring cavity fiber laser that is passively mode-locked by a series of waveplates and a polarizer is presented in this paper. Specifically, it is shown that the multipulsing instability can be circumvented in favor of bifurcating to higher-energy single pulses by appropriately adjusting the group velocity dispersion in the fiber and the waveplate/polarizer settings in the saturable absorber. The findings may be used as practical guidelines for designing high-power lasers since the theoretical model relates directly to the experimental settings.
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijo/2012/354156/