A novel Whispering-Gallery-Mode （WGM） fibre laser, emitting linearly polarised three-colour light, is demonstrated by pumping and gain coupling with evanescent waves. The pump light is longitudinally coupled into a bare optical fibre immersed in a dye solution of lower refractive index. The dye molecules around the bare fibre are excited by the evanescent waves of pump light when they propagate along the fibre in a total internal reflection. When the pump beam within the fibre is a meridian beam, the WGM lasing emission from the fibre laser is a linearly polarised transverse electric wave, while it is a mixed wave of the linearly polarised transverse electric and magnetic waves if the pump beam is a skew beam within the fibre. Because the excited molecules are located within the evanescent field of WGM, a good spatial overlap between the dye gain and the evanescent field leads to a high pumping efficiency and a longer gain distance along the fibre. Once the bare fibre is inserted into three glass capillaries filled with Rhodamine 6G, 610 and 640 dye solutions, respectively, WGM laser oscillations at the wavelengths of 567-575, 605-614 and 656-666 nm occur simultaneously, and a linearly polarised three-colour lasing emission is achieved in a single optical fibre.
The polarization properties of an evanescent-wave pumped Whispering Gallery Mode(WGM) fibre laser have been investigated. It is found that there are two kinds of polarization lasing beam emitting from the evanescent-wave pumped WGM fibre laser under two different pump conditions.When the pump beam is strictly along the axial direction of an optical fibre,the lasing emission is transverse electric wave and the electrical vectors at emitting points are along the radial direction of the fibre,which forms a special radial polarization radiation.However,when the pump beam deviates from the axial direction of the fibre,both transverse electric and transverse magnetic waves exist in the lasing emission,which forms a mixed polarization radiation with radial and axial polarized elements.Based on lasing radiation mechanism of evanescent-wave pumped WGM fibre laser,the observed polarization properties are well explained.
HAN DeYu PU XiaoYun JIANG Nan FENG YongLi ZHU Kun ZHANG YuanXian
