All-fiber mode-locked laser based on microfiber polarizer.

A novel all-fiber mode-locked fiber laser based on microfiber polarizer is proposed and demonstrated. The microfiber polarizer is composed of two pieces of microfibers that are finely manipulated to be partly overlapped. Because of the asymmetric cross section, the microfiber polarizer shows a strong birefringence that ultimately induces a high polarization-selective feature. Compared with other polarizers, the microfiber polarizer owns the merits of simpler fabrication, lower cost, broader band, and more compact size. The polarization extinction ratio of the microfiber polarizer is 26 dB, and the stable pulse sequence with the duration of 2.9 ps is generated from this microfiber polarizer based all-fiber mode-locked laser.