Ultra-broadband wavelength-swept Tm-doped fiber laser using wavelength-combined gain stages.

A wavelength-swept thulium-doped fiber laser system employing two parallel cavities with two different fiber gain stages is reported. The fiber gain stages were tailored to provide emission in complementary bands with external wavelength-dependent feedback cavities sharing a common rotating polygon mirror for wavelength scanning. The wavelength-swept laser outputs from the fiber gain elements were spectrally combined by means of a dichroic mirror and yielded over 500 mW of output with a scanning range from ~1740 nm to ~2070 nm for a scanning frequency of ~340 Hz.