Pulse extraction and kW peak-power generation with the nonlinear optical loop mirror in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier chain

Summary form only given. In this report we show how to suppress spectrally wide noise, such as amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), and residual coherent background by using the nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) as well as generating pulses with very high peak power in a system of cascaded erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) using a NOLM inbetween. The NOLM acts, in principle, as a passive ideal pulse gate, removing virtually everything between the pulses. The use of a NOLM to reduce ASE and residual coherent background has many advantages such as independence of wavelength, input polarization, pulse repetition rate, and pulse width.