| This thesis discusses theoretical and experimental investigations of modelocked fiber ring lasers as well as the development of an interferometric autocorrelator. Various modes of pulsed operation are investigated for two types of passively modelocked fiber lasers. Further, the tunability of an actively modelocked fiber laser is investigated.; Generation of bound solitons, bunches of solitons and noise-like pulses were observed for both a stretched additive pulse modelocked (APM) erbium doped fiber (EDF) laser and a figure-8 nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) EDF laser.; The stable operation of a high repetition rate, dispersion-tuned, harmonically modelocked EDF laser is also reported. Tunable multi and single wavelength operation was observed over the gain-bandwidth of the EDF.; An interferometric autocorrelator based on second harmonic generation (SHG) in a nonlinear crystal was successfully implemented. For pulses generated by the actively modelocked fiber laser, pulse width and chirp were characterized using this autocorrelator.; Based on the work described, significant insight was gained, and recommendations are made regarding future work in the area of modelocked fiber lasers. |
