Compact, robust, and repetition-rate-locked all-polarization-maintaining femtosecond fiber laser system

We demonstrate a 200-MHz all polarization-maintaining, repetition-rate-locked femtosecond fiber laser system with a total electrical power consumption of 11 W. The center wavelength, spectral width, pulse width, and average output power of the laser are 1558.8 nm, 34 nm, 139 fs, and 77.6 mW, respectively. The proposed laser system that integrates all optical components and locking electronics has a volume less than 1.5 L, a mass of 1.3 kg, and a fast locking time of 3 s (from the free running state to the repetition-rate-locked state). Using a hydrogen maser as the frequency reference, after locking, the Allan deviation is 2.8 mHz at a gate time of 1 s. Further, we place the repetition-rate-locked fiber laser system on a homemade shaker table with peak and rms accelerations of 1.97 and 0.7 g, respectively; the experimental results show that the locking state can be maintained robustly with Allan deviation of 2.0 mHz. The highly integrated, robust fiber laser system has potential applications in the areas of ultralow-noise microwave generation and high-precision distance measurement in outdoor environments. (C) 2019 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).