Abstract
Mode-locked and Q-switched pulsed fiber laser sources with wavelengths of 1.55 μm are widely used in various fields. Gold nanorods (GNRs) have been applied in biomedicine and optics owing to their biocompatibility, easy fabrication, and unique optical properties. This paper presents the analysis of a saturable absorber based on a colloidal gold nanorod (GNR) thin film for dual-function passively mode-locked and Q-switched 1.55-μm fiber lasers. The colloidal GNR thin film possesses superior properties such as a wide operating wavelength range, large nonlinear absorption coefficient, and a picosecond-order recovery time. Its modulation depth and saturation intensity at 1.55 μm are 7.8% and 6.55 MW/cm2, respectively. Passive mode-locked or Q-switched laser operation is achieved by changing the number of GNR thin-film layers. The advantages of these high-quality GNRs in mode-locked and Q-switched fiber lasers with record-high slope efficiency are verified by conducting comprehensive material and laser dynamic analyses. The self-starting mode-locked fiber laser with an efficiency as high as 24.91% and passively Q-switched fiber laser with the maximum energy of 0.403 μJ are successfully demonstrated. This paper presents the novel demonstration of reconfigurable mode-locked and Q-switched all-fiber lasers by incorporating colloidal GNR thin films.
Highlights
This study experimentally demonstrated dual-functional mode-locked and Q-switched Er3+-doped yttria-stabilized zirconia aluminosilicate (YSZA) fiber lasers based on Gold nanorods (GNRs)-polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) thin films. This is the first study, to the best of our knowledge, in which a colloidal GNR-PVA thin film was used as the saturable absorbers (SAs) in a reconfigurable mode-locked and Q-switched fiber laser
Self-starting mode-locked operation was successfully achieved with an efficiency as high as 24.91% and a maximum pulse energy of 2.3 nJ when a single-layer GNR-PVA thin film was employed
Q-switching operation was successfully achieved with a maximum average output power of 16 mW and a maximum pulse energy of 0.403 μJ by using multi-layer GNR-PVA thin films to increase the modulation depth of the SA
Summary
This paper presents the analysis of a saturable absorber based on a colloidal gold nanorod (GNR) thin film for dual-function passively mode-locked and Q-switched 1.55-μm fiber lasers. Passive mode-locked or Q-switched laser operation is achieved by changing the number of GNR thin-film layers. This study presents the fabrication process and material properties of GNR thin-film SAs, along with the demonstration of efficient mode-locked and Q-switched Er3+-doped YAS fiber lasers.
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