Optical-fiber ring cavity with saturable rare-earth-doped fiber

Resonance properties of the all-fiber ring cavity filled with  nonlinear material - saturable rare-earth-doped fiber are analyzed and experimentally investigated. Unlike the earlier investigated erbium-doped fiber at 1550nm where the optical absorption photo-induced change (saturation) is observed only, the ytterbium-doped fiber at 1064nm demonstrates the saturation of the refractive index mainly. For this configuration we report experimental observation of the optical bistability and hysteresis in the transmitted output light at the 10mW-scale incident light power. The experimental results are in qualitative agreement with the theoretical analysis that takes into account the saturation of both parameters: the optical absorption and the refractive index of the doped fiber. The reported results seem promising for applications in high-sensitivity interferometric configurations at 1064nm operation wavelength.