All-fiber ultrafast laser generating gigahertz-rate pulses based on a hybrid plasmonic microfiber resonator

Ultrafast lasers generating high-repetition-rate ultrashort pulses through various mode-locking methods can benefit many important applications,including communications,materials processing,astronomical observation,etc.For decades,mode-locking based on dissipative four-wave-mixing(DFWM)has been fundamental in producing pulses with repetition rates on the order of gigahertz(GHz),where multiwavelength comb filters and long nonlinear components are elemental.Recently,this method has been improved using filter-driven DFWM,which exploits both the filtering and nonlinear features of silica microring resonators.However,the fabrication complexity and coupling loss between waveguides and fibers are problematic.We demonstrate a tens-to hundreds-of gigahertz-stable pulsed all-fiber laser based on a hybrid plasmonic microfiber knot resonator device.Unlike previously reported pulse generation mechanisms,the operation utilizes the nonlinear-polarization-rotation(NPR)effect introduced by the polarization-dependent feature of the device to increase intracavity power for boosting DFWM mode-locking,which we term NPRstimulated DFWM.The easily fabricated versatile device acts as a polarizer,comb filter,and nonlinear component simultaneously,thereby introducing an application of microfiber resonator devices in ultrafast and nonlinear photonics.We believe that our work underpins a significant improvement in achieving practical low-cost ultrafast light sources.