A C- and L-band dual-wavelength erbium-doped fibre laser for assisting four-wave mixing self-stability

A kind of photonic 'Robin Hood' based on four-wave mixing is proposed and proved to be effective, theoretically and experimentally, in detail. Its applications for L-band dual-wavelength erbium-doped fibre (EDF) laser use are experimentally demonstrated at room temperature. The experimental results show that the conventional EDF cavity only induces a very unstable L-band laser, but the novel Robin Hood can effectively suppress the homogeneous gain in the erbium laser. By using suitable fibre Bragg gratings and stretching them, the proposed EDF laser can operate from ~1520 to ~1635 nm, so our dual-wavelength EDF laser can be used in lasing operation not only for the L band but also for the C band. The outstanding merits of our dual-wavelength laser are the flexible tuning and the ultrabroad spectral range of more than 115 nm. The experimental results show that the stability and uniformity of the proposed dual-wavelength laser in C-band operation are better than those for the same laser in L-band operation.