Experimental investigation of pedestal suppression in a figure-eight fiber laser by including a polarization asymmetrical NOLM

A polarization asymmetrical nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) is investigated to perform pedestal-free optical pulses in a figure-eight laser (F8L). The results demonstrate that in the low-power regime the NOLM operates as a half-wave plate and the output polarization is orthogonal to the input one. However, at higher power level the polarization component parallel to the input appears, with a transmission that always begins from zero at low power, allowing the rejection of low-intensity components. Experimental results demonstrate that by employing this configuration we can obtain a contrast between the peak and continuous background higher that 40 dB.