Few-mode random fiber laser with a switchable oscillating spatial mode
Jialiang Lv, Hongxun Li, Yimin Zhang, Runxia Tao, Zhipeng Dong, Chun Gu, Peijun Yao, Yonggang Zhu, Wei Chen, Qiwen Zhan, Lixin Xu
Abstract
Random fiber lasers are of tremendous interest to diverse applications for optical fiber sensing, speckle-free imaging. To date, random fiber lasers with fundamental mode oscillation have been well developed. However, controllable oscillating spatial mode in random fiber lasers have not been reported yet. Here, we propose and demonstrate a few-mode random fiber laser with a switchable oscillating spatial mode based on mode injection locking. An external signal light is injected to realize the locking of transverse mode in this random fiber laser and the direct oscillations of the fundamental mode, hybrid mode, and high order mode can be realized, respectively. This random fiber laser operates in the high-order LP 11 mode stably with a threshold of as low as 88 mW. High efficiency and high purity cylindrical vector beams can be obtained by removing the degeneracy of the LP 11 mode. This work may pave a path towards random fiber lasers with controllable spatial modes for specific applications in mode division multiplexing, imaging, and laser material processing.