Source: http://www.google.com/patents/US6839363?dq=6,073,142
Timestamp: 2016-12-09 00:52:03
Document Index: 681775338

Matched Legal Cases: ['Application No. 60', 'art 710', 'art 730', 'art 1110', 'art 710', 'art 730', 'art 730', 'art 710', 'art 1130', 'art 730', 'arts 710']

Patent US6839363 - Digital control of actively mode-locked lasers - Google PatentsSearch Images Maps Play YouTube News Gmail Drive More »Sign inPatentsDigital control of actively mode-locked lasers where an active feedback control system is implemented to include a digital processor such as a microprocessor. The digital processor digitally extracts noise information from multiple monitor signals generated from the laser output and digitally diagnoses...http://www.google.com/patents/US6839363?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US6839363 - Digital control of actively mode-locked lasersAdvanced Patent SearchTry the new Google Patents, with machine-classified Google Scholar results, and Japanese and South Korean patents.Publication numberUS6839363 B2Publication typeGrantApplication numberUS 10/101,532Publication dateJan 4, 2005Filing dateMar 18, 2002Priority dateMar 16, 2001Fee statusPaidAlso published asUS20020176452, WO2002075873A1Publication number10101532, 101532, US 6839363 B2, US 6839363B2, US-B2-6839363, US6839363 B2, US6839363B2InventorsHong Tony Lin, Chunglin Lee, Perry NeosOriginal AssigneeCalmar Optcom, Inc.Export CitationBiBTeX, EndNote, RefManPatent Citations (43), Non-Patent Citations (17), Referenced by (46), Classifications (20), Legal Events (5) External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, EspacenetDigital control of actively mode-locked lasers
US 6839363 B2Abstract
Digital control of actively mode-locked lasers where an active feedback control system is implemented to include a digital processor such as a microprocessor. The digital processor digitally extracts noise information from multiple monitor signals generated from the laser output and digitally diagnoses the operating condition of the laser based on the noise information. Based on the operating condition of the laser, the digital processor generates control signals to adjust the laser cavity to establish or regain the mode locking condition and to maintain the mode locking by reducing the output noise.
an actively mode-locked laser including a laser cavity, and an optical modulator in said laser cavity responsive to a modulation control signal to modulate at least one of an amplitude and a phase of light in said laser cavity at a modulation frequency to lock optical modes of said laser cavity, a cavity length control element engaged to said laser cavity to control and adjust a cavity length of said laser cavity in response to a cavity length control signal; a thermal control unit to control at least a temperature of a portion of said laser cavity in response to a temperature control signal; a thermal sensor coupled to measure a temperature of said portion of said laser cavity under control of said thermal control unit to produce a temperature control signal to said thermal control unit; an optical detector receiving a portion of a laser output from said laser cavity to produce a detector output; an electrical signal mixer to mix a reference signal split from said modulation control signal with said detector output to produce a mixer output that includes an error signal indicating a frequency difference between said modulation frequency and a multiplicity of a longitudinal mode spacing of said laser cavity; a phase delay unit coupled to a signal path of said reference signal to cause a phase delay in said reference signal in response to a phase delay control signal; at least one bandpass filter, having a spectral bandwidth covering at least frequencies associated with energy relaxation processes in said laser cavity, and coupled to respectively receive and filter another portion of said detector output to produce a filter output signal indicating noise in said laser output; a digital control module to digitally process said filter output signal to extract noise information of said laser output, to digitally process said error signal to extract said frequency difference caused by said laser cavity length, to digitally process said temperature signal to determine a measured temperature of said portion of said laser cavity, wherein said digital control module is operable to produce said cavity length control signal in response to said frequency difference, said temperature control signal, and said phase delay control signal, in response to said noise information of said laser output. 2. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said optical modulator includes a bias input port to receive a bias control signal to bias said optical modulator, and wherein said digital control module is operable to generate said bias control signal to reduce noise energy in said filter output signal.
3. The laser system as in claim 2, wherein said digital control module is operable to periodically adjust said bias control signal to reduce said noise energy.
4. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said digital control module is operable to set said phase delay of said phase delay element to minimize energy of said error signal.
5. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said digital control module is operable to control said cavity length control element to scan said cavity length to determine a selected cavity length from a noise energy pattern as a function of said cavity length to establish mode locking for a first time.
6. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said digital control module is operable to retrieve laser parameters including a value for said laser cavity length, a value for said phase delay, a value for said temperature for a previous mode-locked operation of said laser to initialize said laser not in a mode-locking condition to establish mode locking.
7. The laser system as in claim 6, wherein said digital control module is operable to control said cavity length control element to scan said cavity length to determine a selected cavity length from a noise energy pattern as a function of said cavity length to establish mode locking.
8. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said thermal control unit includes a thermal control chamber that encloses the entirety of said laser cavity.
9. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said thermal control unit includes a thermal control chamber that encloses only a portion of said laser cavity.
10. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said laser cavity is a ring cavity.
11. The laser system as in claim 10, wherein said ring cavity comprises a fiber ring.
12. The laser system as in claim 11, wherein said fiber ring includes a first fiber portion and a second fiber portion that have opposite chromatic dispersions relative to each other.
13. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said cavity length control element includes a piezo-electric element.
14. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said laser cavity is formed of fiber and includes:
a first fiber part formed of a single-mode fiber that maintains a polarization of light; a polarizing beam splitter having a first optical facet coupled to a first terminal of said first fiber part, a second optical facet coupled to a second terminal of said first fiber part, and third optical facet opposing said first optical facet, said polarizing beam splitter configured to reflect light of a first polarization received from said third optical facet to said first optical facet and into said first terminal and to transmit light of said first polarization received from said second optical facet from said first fiber part to reach said third optical facet; a second fiber part formed of a single-mode fiber and having a first terminal coupled to said third optical facet to exchange light with said first fiber part and a second terminal; and a Faraday rotator mirror coupled to said second terminal of said second fiber part to reflect light from said first terminal back with a rotation of 90 degrees in polarization. 15. The laser system as in claim 14, wherein said thermal control unit includes a thermal control chamber that encloses only one portion of said laser cavity, said laser system further comprising a passive thermal control element coupled to a portion of said laser cavity that is not enclosed in said thermal control chamber, wherein said passive thermal control element operable to adjust said cavity length of said laser cavity to negate an effect of thermal expansion without receiving power from a power supply.
16. The laser system as in claim 1 or claim 14, wherein said thermal control unit includes a thermal control chamber that encloses only one portion of said laser cavity, said laser system further comprising a passive thermal control element coupled to a portion of said laser cavity that is not enclosed in said thermal control chamber, wherein said passive thermal control element operable to adjust said cavity length of said laser cavity to negate an effect of thermal expansion without receiving power from a power supply.
17. The laser system as in claim 16, wherein said passive control element includes two different materials with different thermal expansion coefficients.
18. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said digital control module is configured to lock the optical modes by:
controlling at least one of said cavity control element and said thermal control unit to set an operating temperature of said thermal control unit; scanning said cavity control element through an operating adjustment range of the cavity length to find a cavity length value at which output of said at least one optical bandpass filter is at or near a minimum energy, applying a DC bias in said cavity control element to bias the cavity length at said value; applying a modulation to the cavity length to set the output of said at least one optical bandpass filter at or near the minimum energy; and adjusting said phase delay unit to set a value of the phase delay at which the optical modes lock. 19. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said digital control module is configured to maintain locking of the optical modes by setting mixer output from said electrical signal mixer to be at a minimum.
20. The laser system as in claim 1, wherein said digital control module is configured to adjust a DC bias of said optical modulator while maintaining locking of the optical modes, wherein the adjustment comprises:
controlling the cavity length control element to minimize an energy of the output of said at least one bandpass filter; adjusting the DC bias of said optical modulator at which the energy of the output of said at least one bandpass filter is minimized, adjusting the thermal control unit to set the temperature near a center of an operating range; and controlling the cavity length control element to minimize the mixer output of said electrical signal mixer. Description
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/276,784 filed on Mar. 16, 2001, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference as part of this application.
This application relates to control and stabilization of lasers such as actively mode-locked lasers formed in fibers and other optical media.
Actively mode-locked lasers may include a laser cavity enclosing a laser gain medium to produce laser oscillation and an intra-cavity optical modulator to lock different laser modes supported by the laser cavity in phase to produce laser pulses. Either the amplitude or the phase of the intra-cavity optical field may be modulated at a frequency equal to a multiplicity of the mode spacing to achieve the mode locking. Such lasers may be designed to produce high-quality short optical pulses at a very high bit rate such tens of GHz or higher for various applications, including fiber communication systems.
The laser cavity in an actively mode-locked laser performs a number of functions. For example, the laser cavity provides an optical feedback mechanism to bounce light back and forth multiple times through the laser gain medium for optical amplification. The laser cavity also selects one or more proper lasing frequencies within the gain spectral profile of the laser gain medium by requiring each selected frequency of light to be in resonance with the laser cavity. As a further example, the laser cavity operates to confine the light rays of the laser approximately along the optic axis of the laser cavity by filtering out light rays in other directions. As a result, the geometry of the laser cavity affects various characteristics of the laser.
The geometry of the laser cavity, however, may change with respect to many factors, such as environmental conditions (e.g., temperature or vibrations) and its own aging process. One notorious factor is a change in the cavity length. Since a change in the laser cavity generally varies with time, it is therefore desirable to provide an active control mechanism to stabilize the laser cavity by dynamically adjusting the cavity.
This application includes techniques of active laser control and stabilization of actively mode-locked lasers based on digital control circuitry and algorithms. An active feedback control system is implemented to include a digital processor such as a microprocessor that digitally extracts noise information from multiple monitor signals generated from the laser output and digitally diagnoses the operating condition of the laser based on the noise information. Based on the operating condition of the laser, the digital processor generates control signals to adjust the laser cavity to establish or regain the mode locking condition and to maintain the mode locking by reducing the output noise.
FIG. 1 shows one embodiment of an actively mode-locked fiber laser in a ring cavity design with a digital feedback control system.
FIGS. 2 and 3 show two operations of the digital processor in the digital feedback control system in FIG. 1.
FIGS. 4A, 4B, and 4C show a measured signal from a bandpass filter of the laser in FIG. 1 where the laser has a mode locking condition within the operating range of the PZT fiber stretcher.
FIGS. 5A, 5B, and 5C show a measured signal from a bandpass filter of the laser in FIG. 1 where the laser does not satisfy a mode locking condition within the operating range of the PZT fiber stretcher.
FIG. 6 shows a partial active thermal control of the laser cavity for the laser in FIG. 1.
FIG. 7 shows one embodiment of an actively mode-locked fiber laser in a sigma cavity design with a digital feedback control system.
The digital feedback control mechanisms described in this application may be used in various types of actively mode-locked lasers, including lasers with ring cavities and non-ring cavities (e.g., Fabry-Perot cavities), lasers with fibers as the gain media or other forms of materials as gain media (e.g., gases, liquids, and solids such as crystals). The following describes embodiments of digital feedback control mechanisms in actively mode-locked fiber lasers as examples.
In general, an active mode-locked laser produces laser pulses whose pulse repetition rate is in synchronization with a master clock rate at which the intra cavity modulator modulates the light. If the period of the master clock changes, the pulse repetition rate needs to change accordingly. This is achieved by using the digital feedback control to adjust the total optical path length of the laser cavity for both stabilizing the laser against disturbances to produce a substantially constant pulse repetition rate and synchronizing the laser to the master clock.
The digital feedback control mechanism of this application includes a slow control mechanism to correct slow changes in the cavity geometry, e.g., caused by the temperature drift, and a fast control mechanism to correct sudden changes in the cavity geometry, e.g., caused by vibrations or certain processes in the gain medium. The slow control mechanism may also be used to bias the optical cavity so that the operating point of the fast control mechanism is set within the operating range to allow for control in both directions. The fast cavity control mechanism may be implemented by using a transducer engaged to part of the laser cavity, e.g., a piezo-electric transducer, to adjust the physical length of the laser cavity at a high speed in response to a control signal. As will be described below, a bias stretch produced by the transducer may also be used to adjust the bias of the laser cavity or to operate as a slow control mechanism.
FIG. 1 shows one embodiment of an actively mode-locked fiber laser 100 that uses fiber segments to form a closed fiber ring or loop 101 and a digital control feedback system with a digital control module 180. This fiber ring 101 constitutes the laser cavity. Polarization-maintaining single-mode (“PM”) fibers or polarizing single-mode fibers may be used in the fiber ring 101 to make it polarization maintaining. A PM fiber is configured to have well-defined principal axes for two mutually orthogonal polarizations. A polarizing fiber has a single principal polarization axis. These two types of fibers can be configured so that a principal axis is essentially not influenced by environmental conditions, such as fiber position, temperature, and stress. Therefore, the polarization of a beam propagating in such a fiber can be maintained. In the following description, the term of “polarization-maintaining fiber” will be used to include any fiber or optical waveguide that can preserve an optical polarization of a beam.
The fiber ring 101 includes a fiber segment 110 which is doped with active ions to produce the desired optical gain for the laser oscillation when excited by energy from an external pump power source. The external pump power source may be electrical or optical. One example of electrical pumping is the excitation by supplying a current to a semiconductor gain medium. In an optical pumping scheme, the pump light source produces light at a pump wavelength generally shorter than the lasing wavelength. The optical gain medium, e.g., the fiber segment 110 in this example, absorbs the pump light to produce the optical gain. When the optical gain in the segment 110 exceeds the total optical loss in the entire ring 101, laser oscillation can be generated. Different dopants can be used to achieve laser oscillations at different wavelengths. For example, atomic transitions in rare-earth ions, such as erbium, holmium, neodymium, samarium, thulium and ytterbium, can be used to produce lasers from visible wavelengths to far infrared wavelengths (e.g., from 0.45 to about 3.5 microns). Er-doped fiber lasers for producing optical pulses at 1.55 micron are particularly useful for optical fiber communication since the optical loss in the commonly used silica fibers is minimum at about 1.55 micron under optical pumping at 980 nm or 1480 nm. Two or more different rare-earth ions can be mixed together to achieve certain pump and laser wavelengths that may not be readily available from a single doping element.
An optical pump source 130 (e.g., a laser) may be used to generate the desired pump light 132 at a proper pump wavelength (e.g., 1480 nm). The pump source 130 may operate in response to an electrical driving signal 131 as in a diode-based pump source where the signal 131 is the driving current to the diode or diodes. An optical coupler 122 such as a fiber coupler is coupled in the fiber ring 101 adjacent to the fiber gain segment 110 to couple the pump light 132 into the gain segment 110. The optical coupler 122 is wavelength selective to couple only light at the pump wavelength and does not couple light at the laser wavelength. An optical bandpass filter 128 may be deployed in the fiber ring 101 to select only the desired laser wavelength to circulate in the fiber ring 101 by suppressing light at other wavelengths. An optical power splitter 124, e.g., a WDM fiber coupler, may be used to split a portion of the laser power at the laser wavelength in the ring 101 to produce a laser output. Another optical coupler 160 is further used to split the laser output into a beam 161 as the final laser output and a monitor beam 162 for monitoring the condition of the laser oscillation and the fiber ring 101 in one or more control feedback loops for stabilizing the laser. An optical isolator 120 may be connected in the fiber ring 101 to ensure a single-directional oscillation in the fiber ring 101 (e.g., the clockwise direction as shown).
A mode-locked laser generally produces multiple longitudinal modes that oscillate simultaneously. A mode-locking mechanism is implemented within the resonator to synchronize the phases of different modes in such a way that the phase difference between any two adjacent modes is a constant. These phase-locked modes constructively add to one another to produce a short pulse. In the laser 100, an intra-cavity optical modulator 126 is coupled in the fiber ring 101 to modulate the light in the fiber ring 101 under a control by a modulator control signal 194 at a modulation frequency. One exemplary implementation of such a modulator is an electro-optic modulator based on the electro-optic effect. A LiNbO3 crystal or other electro-optic material may be used. A Mach-Zehnder configuration may be used in the modulator 126. The modulator 126 may be an amplitude modulator or a phase modulator.
The modulator 126 may include a driver input port 126A for receiving the control signal 194 at the modulation frequency and a bias input port 126B for receiving a bias control signal 126C. A modulator driver 190, such as a RF signal generator or synthesizer, is used to produce the modulator control signal 194 to drive the optical modulator 126. The control signal 194 may be a RF signal at a desired frequency, e.g. tens of GHz, such as 10 GHz, 40 GHz or higher, depending on the requirements of applications. To obtain stable and high-quality short pulses in the laser 100, the total laser cavity length should produce a mode spacing such that an integer multiple of the mode spacing matches the modulation frequency of the modulator 126 with a high accuracy, e.g., a relative deviation less than 10−7. The digital feedback control in the laser 100 is designed to adjust the length of the fiber the ring 101 to maintain this phase matching condition.
Notably, the bias of the modulator 126 may also affect the phase matching condition and thus should be maintained by the digital feedback control loop at a certain bias value. This bias value sets the operating point in the transfer function of the modulator 126. The bias control signal 126C, as described below, may be generated by the digital feedback control and used as one of control parameters for controlling the laser 100.
For example, when a Mach-Zehnder amplitude modulator is used as the modulator 126, the transfer function is a sinusoidal function of the bias voltage due to the interference of light from the two different optical paths. For purpose of mode locking of the laser 100, the bias should be set adjacent to the bias voltage VB0 where a complete destructive interference occurs to produce an output minimum. Typically, the DC bias may be set as close as possible to VB0 to achieve a large time derivative of the slope of the transmission of the modulator as a function of time, i.e., the second derivative of the transmission with respect to time. Under this condition, the mode-locked pulses are discovered to be narrow and stable. On the other hand, the bais voltage should be sufficiently deviated from VB0 to avoid mode locking at the second harmonic frequency of the driving modulation frequency in order to achieve stable mode locking at the modulation frequency. For a given Mach-Zehnder modulator where the half-wave voltage is Vπ, the bias voltage may be set at Vbias≈VB0±Vπ/10 range.
The bais of the optical modulator 126, however, may drift away from the desired point in the transfer function. Such a drift in a Mach-Zehnder modualtor, for example, is known to be caused by various factors. This drift may adversely affect the mode-locking of the laser 100 and to increase the noise in the laser output. Hence, as will be described in lase sections, the digital feedback control may be designed to monitor such drift and to correct the drift to maintain the proper bias during operation of the laser 100.
The optical dispersion in the fiber ring 101 may be reduced to a desirable small amount by design, e.g., using low-dispersion optical materials. When the dispersion of the fiber ring 101 is unacceptable, a dispersion compensating fiber segment 112 may be included in the fiber ring 101 to produce an optical chromatic dispersion that negates the chromatic dispersion in the fiber ring 101 caused by other fibers and the fiber gain segment 110. This dispersion compensating fiber segment 112 may be configured to operate in two different modes. In the first mode, the fiber 112 is designed to reduce or minimize the overall dispersion in the fiber ring 101 and hence to shorten the pulse width. In the second mode, the fiber 112 is designed to provide a condition where the self-phase modulation and the group velocity dispersion are balanced to produce optical solitons rather than regular optical pulses. As illustrated, the dispersion compensating fiber segment 112 may include two fiber segments DSF1 and DSF2 with opposite dispersions to achieve a desired net dispersion in the ring 101.
The laser 100 uses a thermally controlled chamber or housing 150 to enclose and thermally stabilize the fiber ring 101 at or near a desired cavity temperature as the surrounding temperature changes by either heating up the chamber or extracting heat from the chamber. A temperature control unit 152 is thermally coupled to the chamber 150 to actively control the temperature of the fiber ring 101 in response to a control signal 151. In some implementations, the cavity temperature is usually kept higher than the temperature of the surroundings. The temperature control unit 152 may include an adjustable electrical heating element or a thermal electrical element which may operate to heat or cool. One or more temperature sensors 154A are distributed in the chamber 150 to measure the temperature therein. The sensor signal 156A from the temperature sensor 154A is fed to the digital control module 180 of the laser 100 that generates the control signal 151 based on the signal 156A. This forms one active control loop in the laser 100.
The laser 100 also has a cavity length controller 140, such as a fiber stretcher coupled in the fiber ring 101, e.g., at the fiber segment 112, to control the overall optical path length of the fiber ring 101 against fluctuations that cause noise in the laser output and degrade the mode-locking phase-matching condition. The fiber stretcher 140 operates to change the length of the fiber segment to which it is engaged at a speed higher than the thermal control chamber 150 to provide a high-speed adjustment to the cavity length. A control signal 141A, which is initially generated from the digital control module 180 as a control signal 141 and is amplified by a high-voltage amplifier 144, is used to control the operation of the fiber stretcher 140. This forms the second control loop of the laser 100 and operates as the fast control mechanism. The control signal 141A may include an AC signal portion to dither the fiber stretcher 140 to control the overall cavity length at a desired value to maintain the mode-locking phase-matching condition and to minimize the output noise. In one implementation, a piezo-electric transducer (PZT) may be used as the fiber stretcher, where different PZT voltages of the fiber stretcher correspond to different values of the cavity length. The fiber stretcher 140 is generally enclosed in the chamber 150. The fiber stretcher 140 may also be coupled to control the physical length of the gain fiber 110. Both fiber segments 110 and 112 may be actively controlled by fiber stretchers as the fast control mechanism.
In addition, similar to the thermal control, the fiber stretcher 140 may be biased by a DC signal portion in the control signal 141A to cause a bias stretch in the fiber ring 101 to set the total cavity length at a desired value so that the operating point of the fast control mechanism is set within the operating range to allow for control in both directions. At or near this bias stretch point, the fiber stretcher 140 may be operated to adjust the total length of the fiber ring 101 at a high speed to compensate for laser noise and fluctuations. This bias stretch may be tuned by the digital control module 180 as another slow control mechanism. Either or both of the temperature of the chamber 150 and this bias stretch control may be used to provide the slow control mechanism to correct slow or long-term drifting of the total cavity length.
The performance of the laser 100 is monitored by using an optical detector 170 to convert the optical monitor signal 162 into an electronic monitor signal 172. This optical-to-electronic interface provides a common feedback for different control loops in the digital feedback control system, including the thermal control, the fiber stretcher 140, the modulator bias, and a phase delay in another feedback signal to the digital control module 180 as will be described below.
The digital feedback control system for the laser 100 includes the digital control module 180, an electrical delay unit 175, an electrical signal mixer 174, a low-pass filter 176 and one or more electrical bandpass filters 171, 172, 173. The digital control module 180 is the backbone of the control system and includes a digital processor 181 and circuit interface with the analog part of the feedback control system such as the bandpass filters, the delay unit 175, the bias port 126B of the modulator 126, the thermal control 152, and the fiber stretcher 140. As illustrated, the circuit interface may include an analog-to-digital circuit 182 (e.g., an array of analog-to-digital converters) for converting feedback analog signals into digital signals to be processed by the digital processor 181. Digital-to-analog converters 183 and 184 are also included to convert the control signals produced by the digital processor 181 into analog signals for operating different control elements in the laser 100. The digital processor 181 may be a suitable microprocessor that has a non-volatile memory for storing laser control parameter data and can be programmed to execute the operations as outlined below.
The above operation for maintaining the mode-locking condition in the laser is one of a number features implemented in the digital feedback control. The digital feedback control may be designed to perform complex digital processing of information contained in the detector signal 170A to obtain information on the laser in addition to the phase information in the signal 176A for controlling other aspects of the laser 100.
To achieve the above and other control functions, the control system in the laser 100 is designed to use one or more electrical bandpass filters to provide additional feedback signals to the digital control module 180. More specifically, the laser 100 provides bandpass filters 171, 172, and 173 connected in parallel at different spectral ranges to obtain different filtered signals 171A, 172A, and 173A, respectively, from the common detector output signal 170A. Such filtered signals include noise and other information of the laser. The filter 171 is designed to have a transmission band at a low frequency range to monitor the low-frequency spectral components in the laser output, e.g., 5 Hz to 1 KHz for a fiber ring laser. The filter 172, also called “energy relaxation filter”, is designed to have a transmission band at a middle frequency range to monitor the spectral signals mainly associated with energy relaxation processes in the laser cavity, e.g., the frequency corresponding to the inverse of the laser cavity decay time. In some fiber ring lasers, this range may be from 30 KHz to 36 KHz or in a wider range from 5 KHz to 50 KHz. The filter 173 is designed to have a transmission band at a high frequency range to monitor the high-frequency spectral signals in the laser output, e.g., 40 KHz to 1 MHz for a fiber ring laser. The above use of the three bandpass filters to cover the low, middle and high frequency range of the laser output is just an example and more filters may be used to further divide the spectrum. Such filter output signals are used by the digital processor 181 to extract vital information on the state of the laser that may otherwise not available from the filtered signal 176A. In particular, these filter output signals include information on the noise of the laser output and thus may be used to control the bias on the optical modulator 126, the phase delay unit 175, and adjust the laser from a non-mode-locking condition to a mode-locking condition.
4. If there is a potential mode-lock minimum, further analyze the relaxation filter data obtained from the filter 172 by running a “resolve minimum” sub routine shown in FIG. 2. If steps 3 and 4 do not agree then a mode-lock minimum is treated as out of the range within the current PZT voltage sweep. Under this condition, the temperature setting is changed to another value to repeat the procedures from steps 2-4. If steps 3 and 4 arrive at the same value or the approximately the same value in the PZT voltage, then a mode-lock minimum exists around the neighborhood of that PZT value.
5. Set the fiber stretcher 140 to be biased at a DC voltage of the above PZT value. Optionally, another “find minimum” sub routine in FIG. 3 may be executed to search for the real minimum PZT voltage in the vicinity of the PZT value for the mode-lock minimum in step 4. The DC bias voltage on the fiber stretcher 140 is set at this value.
4. If there is a potential mode-lock minimum further analyze the relaxation filter data by running the “resolve minimum” sub routine in FIG. 2.
If steps 3 and 4 do not agree then a mode-lock minimum was not within this partial PZT voltage sweep, widen the PZT voltage sweep and repeat the procedure from step 2. If steps 3 and 4 arrive at the same answer, then a mode-lock minimum exist around the neighborhood of that answer. In addition, the optional “find minimum” sub routine in FIG. 3 may be executed to find the real minimum PZT voltage.
5 While dithering the PZT voltage to keep the relaxation energy to its minimum, adjust the microwave phase delay so the mixer output is zero.
As noted previously, the bias in the modulator 126 may drift from the desired bias value, e.g., Vbias≈VB0±Vπ/10. Hence, the above phase-lock operation algorithm may further include a subroutine for periodically monitoring the bias and readjusting the bias signal 126C to the modulator 126 to reduce any deviation from the desired bias condition. The initial bias voltage 126C may be determined by observing the output of the modulator 126 in absence of the modulation signal 194 by tuning the bias 126C. This procedure, however, is not applicable during operation of the laser 100 in the mode-locking condition because the removal of the modulation signal 194 can destroy the mode lock operation and thus interrupt the laser operation. This bias control subroutine is designed to operate while maintaining the normal mode-locked operation of the laser.
Referring to FIG. 2, the “resolve minimum” sub routine is essentially a digital pattern recognition routine for identifying a true minimum PZT value in the output response of the energy relaxation filter 172 and the output signals of the filters 171 and 173. This minimum PZT value corresponds to a phase-matched cavity length where the noise of the output signal is minimum when the mode lock is achieved. This sub routine as shown in FIG. 2 includes three basic operations. First, the filtered signal 172A is collected as a function of the sweeping PZT voltage in its operating range over a sampling period of time. FIG. 4A illustrates one example of such data from the relaxation filter 172 where the horizontal axis represents the PZT voltage over a sampling period. The amplitude of the signal represents the noise level in the laser output. Next, at each PZT voltage, the mean value of the signal values measured at different times within the sampling period is computed by the digital processor 181 to represent the signal value at the corresponding PZT voltage. FIG. 4B shows the mean value of the signal. The mean value of the signal values over the entire PZT voltage range is computed and is subtracted from the signal at each PZT voltage to achieve a new signal as shown in FIG. 4C. Third, the middle point between the centers of gravity of two areas with signal peaks is computed as the minimum PZT voltage at which the PZT should be biased at.
When the total laser cavity length is not properly set at a bias initial length, the laser may not meet the phase-matching condition in the entire sweeping range of the PZT voltage on the fiber stretcher. Under this condition, the output of the filter 172 is random and does not have a minimum area between two signal peaks. This condition is shown by data in FIGS. 5A, 5B, and 5C. To achieve mode locking, the initial cavity length should be adjusted by either changing the operating temperature of the chamber 150 or tuning the DC bias PZT voltage n the fiber stretcher to place the phase-matched cavity length within the operating range of the PZT fiber stretcher.
The “find minimum” sub routine in FIG. 3 searches through the vicinity of the minimum PZT voltage from the sub routine in FIG. 2 to find the real minimum PZT voltage. Basically, the digital processor 181 searches by stepping in small increment in both directions achieve this.
In the laser 100 in FIG. 1, the thermally-controlled chamber 150 encompasses the entire laser cavity 101 to heat the chamber above the environmental temperature. This design may be replaced by a partial active thermal control system where one or more selected thermal-sensitive portions of the laser cavity may be enclosed in the thermal control chamber while the remaining portions of the laser cavity may be left outside the chamber. The variation in these remaining portions of the laser cavity may be compensated for by the fast control mechanism.
FIG. 6 shows an alternative design of the laser 100 using the above partial active thermal control. Notably, the fiber segments 110 and 112 may be designed to constitute the majority of the optical path length of the fiber ring 101, e.g., greater than about 80%. Hence, any variations in the physical lengths of the fiber segments 110 and 112 dominate over variations in other fiber segments (less than 3 to 10%) in the fiber ring 101. To reduce the power consumption in thermally stabilizing the fiber ring 101, the thermally controlled chamber or housing 150 may be used to enclose only the fiber segments 110 and 112 while leaving other fiber segments and optical components outside the chamber 150. Additional temperature sensors 150B may also be placed in other parts of the fiber ring 101 outside the thermally-controlled chamber 150. The sensor signals 156B indicating local temperatures at the sensor locations are also fed to the laser control unit 180.
FIG. 7 further shows that the digital control system may be used in a fiber laser in a polarization-stable Sigma fiber laser 700. See, U.S. Pat. No. 5,574,739. The laser cavity includes a first PM fiber part 710 formed of a single-mode PM fiber and a second single-mode fiber part 730 formed of a single-mode fiber. The first fiber part 1110 includes the modulator 126, the optical isolator 120, and the output coupler 124. Two terminals of the fiber part 710 are coupled to two facets of a polarizing beam splitter 720 which is coupled to one end of the second fiber part 730. The other end of the fiber 730 is terminated at a Faraday rotator mirror 740 which reflects light with a 90-degree rotation in polarization. A portion 732 of the second fiber part 730 may be doped as the optical gain medium. The line 750 represents the direction of the light in the optical cavity: light starts from the gain section 732 to be reflected by the reflector 740 and is amplified again before reaching the beam splitter 720. Light in one polarization is selected to be reflected into the first fiber part 710 by the beam splitter 720 and is fed back to the gain section 732 after being modulated by the modulator 126 and passing through the beam splitter 720. Light in the other polarization is suppressed. The second fiber part 1130 may also include a dispersion compensating fiber segment 734 similar to the segment 112 in FIG. 1. The thermal control chamber 150 may be used to enclose the entire laser cavity as in FIG. 1 or only the second fiber part 730 to reduce the power consumption as in FIG. 6. The fiber stretcher 140 may be placed in either of the fiber parts 710 and 730.
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INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:LIN, HONG;LEE, CHUNGLIN;NEOS, PERRY;REEL/FRAME:012917/0659;SIGNING DATES FROM 20020405 TO 20020424Jul 7, 2008FPAYFee paymentYear of fee payment: 4Jul 14, 2008REMIMaintenance fee reminder mailedJun 7, 2012FPAYFee paymentYear of fee payment: 8Aug 12, 2016REMIMaintenance fee reminder mailedRotateOriginal ImageGoogle Home - Sitemap - USPTO Bulk Downloads - Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - About Google Patents - Send FeedbackData provided by IFI CLAIMS Patent Services