Tunable and switchable C-band and L-band multi-wavelength erbium-doped fiber laser employing a large-core fiber filter

•Tunable and switchable C- and L-band single-, dual- and triple-wavelength EDFL.•Tuning range for triple-wavelength regimes covers from 1558.71 to 1580.07 nm.•Tuning ranges for single- and dual-wavelength regimes are 11 nm and 6.23 nm.•The SMSR and tuning step for all laser regimes are up to 55 dB and 0.02 nm. In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a C- and L-band erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) with tunable single-, dual- and triple-wavelength lasing emissions. A tapered structure large-core fiber filter (LCFF) is inserted to serve as tuning component and wavelength selector for tunable and stable multi-wavelength oscillations. Based on the axial strain response of LCFF, two tunable triple-wavelength regimes within the range from 1558.71 to 1579.81 nm are obtained with side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) as high as 55 dB. Moreover, tunable single- and dual-wavelength regimes are also achieved with total tuning range of 11 nm and 6.23 nm, respectively. The tuning step for overall laser regimes is 0.02 nm, and the maximum wavelength sensitivity reaches to 1.87 pm/με. In addition, this proposed versatile EDFL is proved to be very stable since the lasing wavelength shifts and power fluctuations are less than 0.02 nm and 0.78 dB during an hour.