Low-noise soliton molecule generation with an in-phase controllable pulse number by third- and second-order dispersion compensation in an all-fiber erbium-doped oscillator

We report on the experimental results of high-order soliton molecule (SM) generation in an erbium-doped oscillator. The generation of 14 solitons with an average power of 48 mW, a pulse duration of 508 fs, a separation of 2.59 ps between pulses, and a repetition rate of 19 MHz at 1560 nm central wavelength was demonstrated. The stability of this generation was also evidenced by its low relative intensity noise (0.08% in the frequency range [10 kHz–1 MHz]), and a low Allan deviation of frequency repetition rate of 1.98⋅10 −9 at an interval of 1 s (during 10 h of free-running measurements). Moreover, the accurate manipulation of SM order by changing the pump power was investigated; we showed the ability to generate with four, six, seven, nine, 10, 11, 13, and 14 pulses with high stable states between solitons. The change in the number of pulses occurred repeatably by increasing and decreasing the pump power, offering a stable source of a controllable number of pulses for potential applications in quantum computing.