Passive Q-switching of an ytterbium-doped fiber (YDF) laser with few-layer topological insulator (TI) is, to the best of our knowledge, experimentally demonstrated for the first time. The few-layer TI: Bi 2 Se 3 (2-4 layer thickness) is fabricated by the liquid-phase exfoliation method, and has a low saturable optical intensity of 53 MW/cm 2 measured by the Z-scan technique. The optical deposition technique is used to induce the few-layer TI in the solution onto a fiber ferrule for successfully constructing the fiber-integrated TI-based saturable absorber (SA). By inserting this SA into the YDF laser cavity, stable Q-switching operation at 1.06 μm is achieved. The Q-switched pulses have the shortest pulse duration of 1.95 μs, the maximum pulse energy of 17.9 nJ and a tunable pulse-repetition-rate from 8.3 to 29.1 kHz. Our results indicate that the TI as a SA is also available at 1 μm waveband, revealing its potential as another wavelength-independent SA (like graphene).

No abstract

Passive Q-switching or mode-locking by placing a saturable absorber inside the laser cavity is one of the most effective and popular techniques for pulse generation. However, most of the current saturable absorbers cannot work well in the visible spectral region, which seriously impedes the progress of passively Q-switched/mode-locked visible pulsed fibre lasers. Here, we report a kind of visible saturable absorber-two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs, e.g. WS2, MoS2, MoSe2), and successfully demonstrate compact red-light Q-switched praseodymium (Pr(3+))-doped all-fibre lasers. The passive Q-switching operation at 635 nm generates stable laser pulses with ∼200 ns pulse duration, 28.7 nJ pulse energy and repetition rate from 232 to 512 kHz. This achievement is attributed to the ultrafast saturable absorption of these layered TMDs in the visible region, as well as the compact and all-fibre laser-cavity design by coating a dielectric mirror on the fibre end facet. This work may open a new route for next-generation high-performance pulsed laser sources in the visible (even ultraviolet) range.

We report on the generation of multiwavelength passively mode-locked pulses in an erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) based on the interaction of graphene and fiber-taper evanescent field. Graphene-polymer nanocomposites in aqueous suspension are trapped by the optical evanescent light and deposited on taper region. The graphene-deposited fibertaper device not only acts as an excellent saturable absorber for mode-locking, but also induces a polarizing effect to form an artificial birefringent filter for multiwavelength selection. By simultaneously exploiting both functions of this device, four-wavelength continuous-wave mode-locking operation of an EDFL is stably initiated with a pulse width of 8.8 ps and a fundamental repetition rate of 8.034 MHz. This is the first time, to our knowledge, the mode-locked EDFL using such a new geometry of graphene-based tapered-fiber saturable absorber has been demonstrated. LD @ 974 nm WDM 3-m EDF ISO 10% output 90:10 OC 13-m SMF PC Graphene-deposited fiber-taper mode-lockerExperimental setup of the multiwavelength passively modelocked EDFL based on the graphene-deposited fiber-taper device

We report on the first passively Q-switched Nd:YAlO₃ laser at ~1079.5 nm using MoS₂ as saturable absorber. The MoS₂ saturable absorber is fabricated by transferring the liquid-phase-exfoliated MoS₂ nanosheets onto a BK7 glass substrate. By inserting the glass MoS₂ saturable absorber into a plano-concave Nd:YAlO₃ laser cavity, we obtain a stable Q-switched laser operation with a maximum average output power of 0.26 W corresponding to a pulse repetition rate of 232.5 kHz, a pulse width of 227 ns and a pulse energy of about 1.11 μJ. The results experimentally confirm the promising application of the new kind of 2D material, few-layer MoS₂, in solid state lasers.