Experimental and numerical studies of mode-locked fiber laser with large normal and anomalous dispersion.

An ytterbium-doped mode-locked fiber laser was demonstrated with a chirped fiber Bragg grating for dispersion management. The cavity net dispersion could be changed from large normal dispersion (2.4 ps(2)) to large anomalous dispersion (-2.0 ps(2)), depending on the direction of the chirped Bragg grating in laser cavity. The proposed fiber lasers with large normal dispersion generated stable pulses with a pulse width of <1.1 ns and a pulse energy of 1.5 nJ. The laser with large anomalous dispersion generated wavelength-tunable soliton with a pulse width of 2.7 ps and pulse energy of 0.13 nJ. A theoretical model was established and used to verify the experimental observations.