Single-frequency active Q-switched distributed fiber laser using acoustic waves

This letter presents a single mode, actively Q-switched distributed feedback fiber laser. Acoustic pulses are launched into an erbium-doped fiber Bragg grating, resulting in the introduction of a traveling defect. Thus, a transmission peak appears in the reflection band while the pulse travels along the grating. This effect allows the laser to operate in a Q-switched regime, providing optical pulses which repetition rate was continuously tuned up to 10kHz. Pulses of 168mW of peak power and 73ns of temporal width were obtained at low repetition rate.