Optofluidic tunable mode-locked fiber laser using a long-period grating integrated microfluidic chip

Abstract

An optofluidic tunable mode-locked fiber laser using a microfluidic chip integrated with long-period grating (LPG) is presented. The microfluidic chip enables ultrafine adjustment of the liquid's refractive index and, thus, LPG's spectrum via tuning the mixing ratio of the microfluidic flows. With such an optofluidic spectrum-tunable filter, the central wavelength of the mode-locked laser can be tuned continuously, while the mode-locking state is steadily maintained. The mode-locked pulses are measured with a pulse duration of 0.9 ps and repetition rate of 12.14 MHz, respectively. Moreover, bound solitons with variable soliton separations are experimentally demonstrated.