Q-switched ytterbium doped fiber laser using multi-walled carbon nanotubes saturable absorber

Abstract

A Q-switched ytterbium-doped fiber laser (YDFL) is proposed and demonstrated using a newly developed multi-walled carbon nanotubes polyethylene oxide (MWCNTs-PEO) film as a passive saturable absorber (SA). The saturable absorber is prepared by mixing the MWCNTs homogeneous solution into a dilute PEO polymer solution before it is left to dry at room temperature to produce thin film. Then the film is sandwiched between two FC/PC fiber connectors and integrated into the laser cavity for Q-switching pulse generation. The laser generates a stable pulse operating at wavelength of 1060.2 nm with a threshold pump power of 53.43 mW. The YDFL generates a stable pulse train with repetition rates ranging from 7.92 to 24.27 kHz by varying 980-nm pump power from 53.42 to 65.72 mW. At 59.55-mW pump power, the lowest pulse width and the highest pulse energy are obtained at 12.18 µs and 143.5 nJ, respectively.

Passively Q-switched of EDFL employing multi-walled carbon nanotubes with diameter less than 8 nm as saturable absorber

“…As the pump power is tuned from 103 mW to 215 mW, the repetition rate increases almost steadily from 41.6 kHz to 76.92 kHz. The repetition rate at incident pump power of 215 mW, is highly comparable to other previously reported works on MWCNTs-based SAs [4,9,11] [17][18][19] The average output power of 0.17 mW is obtained at maximum pump power. The relationship between the repetition rate and average output power with respect to the pump power is clearly shown in Fig.…”

“…The broadband properties of MWCNTs for pulsed laser generation utilized MWCNTs with diameter of 10 to 20 nm had successfully demonstrated at 1 m [9], 1.5 m [3,10] and 2 m [10] region. A paper reported by Kasim et al [9] utilizes MWCNTs-polyethylene oxide (PEO) composite as SA in 1 micron region, yielding a maximum of 24 kHz repetition rate and 143.5 nJ of pulse energy operating at central wavelength 1060.2 nm. The shortest pulse width is at 12.18 μs at maximum input pump power of 65.72 mW.…”

Delivering dispersion-managed soliton and Q-switched pulse in fiber laser based on graphene and nonlinear optical loop mirror

“…Q-switched pulse fiber laser and mode-locked pulse fiber laser are the most commonly pulse fiber lasers. There are generally several ways to achieve passive Q-switching such as semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs) [6], carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [7] and graphene [8] and so on. To obtain passively mode-locked fiber laser, except for the methods mentioned above, nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) [9], NOLM [10] and nonlinear amplifier loop mirror (NALM) [11] are exploited over past decades, too.…”

Passively Q-switched S-band thulium fluoride fiberlaser with multi-walled carbon nanotube

“…Among the key reasons for this is the over-dependence on the C-band of optical fiber systems [1] . As such, substantial research efforts are now focused toward exploiting the L-band [2,3] , 1.0 μm [4,5] , and 2.0 μm [6,7] regions to increase bandwidth availability. Furthermore, recent developments have also seen the exploration of the S-band as a viable region for expanding the current communications bandwidth to cater to this increasing demand [1] .…”