Mode-locked fibre lasers for telecommunications

Mode-locked rare earth-doped single mode fibre lasers are receiving much attention as sources for ultrafast optical processing and transmission applications. In particular, erbium-doped fibre lasers have been shown to be viable sources of picosecond duration optical pulses in the low-loss, soliton supporting spectral region of silica fibres. A major goal is a source for long-haul nonlinear (soliton) data transmission systems. The authors describe work which has focussed on the development of practical, laser diode-pumped, fully integrated fibre laser sources. In addition, they describe recent experiments exploring all-optical, active mode-locking techniques which permit the lasers to be driven directly by streams of optical pulses