We propose and demonstrate the cascaded multi-wavelength mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) based on ultra-long-period gratings (ULPGs) for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. Study found that the ULPG can be used as both a mode-locker for pulse shaping and a comb filter for multi-wavelength generation simultaneously. Using the dual-function of ULPG, three-, four-, five-, six-, and seven-wavelength mode-locked pulses are obtained in EDFL, seven of which are the largest number of wavelengths up to now. For the four-wavelength soliton pulses, their pulse width is about 7.8 ps. The maximum average output power and slope efficiency of these pulses are 8.4 mW and 2.03%, respectively. Besides the conventional pulses, hybrid soliton pulses composed of a four-wavelength pulse and single soliton are also observed. Finally, the effect of cavity dispersion on the multi-wavelength mode-locked pulses is also discussed. Our findings indicate that apart from common sensing and filtering, the ULPG may also possess attractive nonlinear pulse-shaping property for ultrafast photonics application.

The spectral purity of fiber lasers has become a critical issue in both optical sensing and communication fields. As a result of ultra-narrow intrinsic linewidth, stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering (STRS) has presented special potential to compress the linewidth of fiber lasers. To suppress stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), the most dominant disturbance for STRS in optical fibers, a semi-quantitative estimation has been established to illuminate the mechanism of suppressing SBS in a periodic tapered fiber, and it agrees with experimental results. Finally, a linewidth compression device based on STRS is integrated into a single-longitudinal-mode ring-cavity fiber laser with secondary cavities, and its linewidth is verified to be 200 Hz through a self-heterodyne detecting and Voigt fitting method.