All-fiber ultrafast laser generating gigahertz-rate pulses based on a hybrid plasmonic microfiber resonator

Abstract

Ultrafast lasers generating high repetition rate ultrashort pulses through various modelocking methods can benefit many important applications including communication, materials processing, astronomical observation, etc. For decades, mode-locking based on dissipative four-wave-mixing (DFWM) has been fundamental in producing pulses with repetition rates on the order of gigahertz (GHz), where multiwavelength comb filters and long nonlinear components are elemental. Recently, this method has been improved using filterdriven DFWM, which exploits both the filtering and nonlinear features of silica microring resonators. However, the fabrication complexity and coupling loss between waveguides and fibers are problematics. In this study, we demonstrate a tens to hundreds of gigahertz stable pulsed all-fiber laser based on the hybrid plasmonic microfiber knot resonator device. Unlike previously reported pulse generation mechanisms, the operation utilizes the nonlinearpolarization-rotation (NPR) effect introduced by the polarization-dependent feature of the device to increase intracavity power for boosting DFWM mode-locking, which we term NPR -stimulated DFWM. The easily-fabricated versatile device acts as a polarizer, comb filter, and nonlinear component simultaneously, thereby introducing a novel application of microfiber resonator devices in ultrafast and nonlinear photonics. We believe that our work underpins a significant improvement in achieving practical low-cost ultrafast light sources.

Exciting Magnetic Dipole Mode of Split-Ring Plasmonic Nano-Resonator by Photonic Crystal Nanocavity

“…Therefore, we use the finite difference time domain (FDTD) technique to verify the simulation and find that the results of the two algorithms are consistent. Our approach may open the way for the on-chip applications of a magnetic field component in the optical field, such as a magnetic sensor [ 30 ], magneto-optic modulator [ 31 , 43 , 44 , 45 ], second harmonic manipulation [ 46 ], all-optical switch [ 47 ], microwave sensor [ 48 ], plasmonic nanolasers, and spacer [ 49 , 50 , 51 ].…”

Magnetic-Optic Effect-Based Topological State: Realization and Application

“…They have attracted much recent interest for their promising applications in subwavelength nanophotonics (Barnes et al, 2003;Luo and Ishihara, 2004). There is a magnetic counterpart of it in the magnetic system, known as "magnetic surface plasmons", which inhabit in the magnetic system due to the coupling of EM waves to the collective resonance of spin wave (Chern, 2008;Hu et al, 2012;Ding et al, 2020). When a periodic array of such material is assembled together, the photonic states that hop from one magnetic surface plasmons state to another can form a magnetic surface plasmons band (Shen et al, 2012).…”

Recent Progress in Microfiber-Optic Sensors

“…Owing to the large evanescent fields with high surface intensity, functional material-integrated microfiber devices offer strong light-matter interactions for sensing applications. Various aforementioned microfiber structures have been reported for integration with plasmonic materials [150][151][152][153][154][155][156], polymers [49,[157][158][159][160], two-dimensional (2D) materials [161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172][173], sol-gels [174,175], magnetic fluids [176][177][178], and biomaterials [41]. For example, Fig.…”