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US 4,635,263 AGranted
Soliton laser
AssigneeAT&T Bell Laboratories
InventorLinn F. Mollenauer
Life of this patent
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AssigneeAT&T Bell Laboratories
InventorLinn F. Mollenauer
Estimating the term…
A portion of the pulsed output of a 3-mirror, folded, astigmatically compensated cavity of a c.w., mode-locked, color center laser is coupled into a single-mode, polarization-preserving optical fiber. Following compression of the pulses by their propagation through the fiber, the shortened pulses, which take the form of essentially solitons, are fed back into the laser cavity so as to coincide and be in phase with the pulses in the laser cavity. Through the process of stimulated emission in the color center crystal, the injected pulses force the laser itself to produce shorter pulses of essentially the same shape as the solitons. Also described are embodiments employing a mode-locked semiconductor, fiber-Raman laser, and unidirectional pulse propagation in the fiber. Two of the fiber-Raman laser embodiments have separate gain and pulse shaping sections of optical fiber joined by an optical fiber directional coupler.
In a laser, apparatus comprising
A soliton laser comprising
A laser apparatus for generating optical radiation at its output at a predetermined wavelength in response to pump pulses at its input comprising a gain medium for amplifying said optical radiation in response to said pump pulses, an essentially single-mode polarization-preserving optical waveguide which is capable of supporting solitons at said predetermined wavelength, first coupling means for coupling said optical radiation at a predetermined wavelength from said gain medium both to said output and to said optical waveguide, and second coupling means for coupling said pump pulses and said optical radiation from said optical waveguide into said gain
A laser apparatus for generating optical radiation at its output at a predetermined wavelength in response to pump pulses at its input comprising a first and second section of optical fiber waveguide, said first section of optical fiber waveguide having a Raman gain coefficient such that it will amplify radiation at said predetermined wavelength when pumped by said pump pulses, said second section being an essentially single-mode polarization-preserving optical waveguide which is capable of supporting soliton pulses at said predetermined wavelength, first coupling means for coupling radiation out of said first section both to said output and into said second section, and second coupling means for coupling soliton pulses out of said second section and said pump pulses at said input into said first section.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.