Multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser based on inhomogeneous loss mechanism by use of a highly nonlinear fiber and a Fabry-Perot filter.

We demonstrated a simple technique to obtain stable room temperature multiwavelength lasing in an erbium-doped fiber laser by the inhomogeneous loss mechanism. Successful reduction of the cross-gain saturation in erbium-doped fiber was achieved by incorporating a section of highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) and a Fabry-Perot filter (FPF) in the laser cavity. More than 70 wavelengths simultaneous lasing were observed with the same frequency space of 25GHz. The laser had a total output power of ~3.2dBm, a bandwidth of 0.012nm (~1.5GHz) and a signal-to-spontaneous-noise ratio of ~44dB. Furthermore, the total output power can be increased to more than 190mW by moving the output port right after the EDFA.