we demonstrated a compact stable room-temperature multiwavelength erbium doped fiber laser by employing a 45° tilted fiber gratings (tfgs) based all-fiber polarization interference filter. benefiting from the filter, the channel number, the linewidth, the uniformity and stabilization of the multiwavelength laser were greatly improved. the filter also worked as a polarizing functional device in nonlinear polarization rotation leading to multiwavelength operation. more than 60 wavelengths (within 3db bandwidth) lasing with a linewidth of 0.03nm and a signal-to-noise ratio of 31db were obtained. the wavelength spacing was 0.164nm agreeing with the value of the filter and it can be flexibly controlled by adjusting the length of the filter. © 2017 spie.