Plasmonic structure assisted all-optical tunable fiber laser

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed and demonstrated a tunable fiber laser using all-optical plasmonic modulation, where the localized surface plasmon resonance effect of gold nanobipyramids (GNBPs) and polarization maintaining thin-cladding photonic crystal fiber were utilized to realize tunable output wavelength controlled by the 980 nm pump light. The laser achieves a tunability of 2.21 nm in C-band, with a side mode suppression ratio of 27 dB and the peak intensity can also be tuned continuously. The proposed tunable laser shows an average power fluctuation of less than 1 dB and the output wavelength and the power intensity both exhibit high stability. Therefore, the proposed plasmonic structure assisted all-optical tunable laser has advantages such as compact structure, good reproducibility, continuous tuning, and simple operation, which indicates great potential in future all-optical applications.