Observation of acetylene molecular absorption line with tunable, single-frequency, and mode-hop-free erbium-doped fiber ring laser

We succeeded in observing one of the absorption lines of acetylene [P(16)] using an erbium-doped fiber-ring laser, which is the first such observation using a fiber-ring laser. The observed linewidth of the P(16) linear absorption was approximately 450 MHz. Mode competition and mode hopping were suppressed by using an ultra narrow-band fiber Bragg grating and a Fabry-Perot filter in the ring laser, respectively. Wavelength fine-tuning was carried out by changing the cavity length of the fiber-ring laser; the fine-tuning range was about 850 MHz (0.01 nm). Furthermore, wavelength tuning was achieved by controlling the temperature of the fiber Bragg grating, and the coarse timing range was about 0.2 mn.