Bismuth fiber integrated laser mode-locked by carbon nanotubes

Abstract

We demonstrate passive mode-locking of a Bi-doped fiber laser using a nanotube-based saturable absorber. We achieve stable mode-locking in both the all-normal and net anomalous dispersion regimes. Near transform-limited 4.7 ps soliton pulses are generated in the average-soliton regime, with a chirped fiber Bragg grating used for dispersion compensation to retain an all-fiber format.

Carbon nanotubes for ultrafast fibre lasers

“…As an example, CoMoCaT SWNTs of small diameters (0.7-1.1 nm) perfectly works in Yb and Bi-doped fibre lasers [51,61]. At the same time, HiPco tubes are very efficient for Er, Pr, Bi-doped fibre lasers [62,128,129].…”

“…In contrast with rare earthdoped active fibres, which cannot provide generation at this band, Bi-doped fibres have shown the broad gain in the region, favourable for ultrashort pulse formation. Despite such high demand in laser sources, there are just several works on mode-locked Bi-doped fibre lasers, utilising SESAM [239,240] and CNT-based SA [61]. The first Bi-doped fibre laser to produce stable ultrashort pulses by using the SWNT-based SA was proposed and realised in 2010 [61].…”

“…Despite such high demand in laser sources, there are just several works on mode-locked Bi-doped fibre lasers, utilising SESAM [239,240] and CNT-based SA [61]. The first Bi-doped fibre laser to produce stable ultrashort pulses by using the SWNT-based SA was proposed and realised in 2010 [61]. Here, the generation was achieved in both all-normal dispersion (ANDi) and dispersion-managed (DM) net anomalous cavity at 1157 and 1177 nm band, correspondingly.…”

“…There are numerous reports in the literature [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67] on the use of SWNTs as mode lockers and Q-switches for ultrafast lasers in the broad wavelength band, which are summarised in Table 1. One of the main advantages of SWNT-based SAs, apart from ultrashort relaxation time and high nonlinearity, is the ease of their fabrication and implementation into the laser setup.…”

Graphene oxide absorber for 2 µm passive mode-locking Tm:YAlO3 laser

“…Moreover, the wavelength of the operation range for SESAMs is limited by the materials. In 2009, single-wall carbon nanotube was used to modelocked 2 μm lasers [20][21][22][23]. Graphene absorber is now believed to be a promising saturable absorber of zero band gap semiconductor, which shows that it can be used at any wavelength [24].…”