Abstract

A tunable fiber ring laser based on an in-line two-taper Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) filter was realized, and the effect of beam waists of the tapers on performance of the laser was investigated with different beam waists of $70\mathrm{\mu m}$, $49\mathrm{\mu m}$, and $33\mathrm{\mu m}$. Experimental results show that the tunable laser with MZI length of $1\mathrm{m}$ and beam waist of $49\mathrm{\mu m}$ can cover $16.1\mathrm{nm}$ with tuning steps of $0.07–0.5\mathrm{nm}$, a bandwidth of $10\mathrm{pm}$, and a side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) of $40–50\mathrm{dB}$. Tuning range is not only determined by the number of the cladding modes but is also affected by the filter loss. Tuning step is determined by the differences of the effective refractive indexes between the cladding modes and the core mode. SMSR is determined by the balance between the extinction ratio of the filter and the cavity loss of the laser due to MZI filter.

© 2011 Optical Society of America

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