Q‐switched erbium doped fiber laser using single‐walled carbon nanotubes embedded in polyethylene oxide film saturable absorber

Abstract

ABSTRACTWe demonstrate simple, compact, and low cost passively Q‐switched erbium doped fiber lasers (EDFLs) using a single‐walled carbon nanotubes based saturable absorber (SA), which is prepared using polyethylene oxide as host polymer. The EDFL starts to generate a stable Q‐switching pulse at pump power of 30.8 mW operating at wavelength of 1533.7 nm. The repetition rate of the Q‐switching pulse can be tuned from 8.0 to 29.4 kHz by increasing the pump power from 30.8 to 69.5 mW while the pulse width drops from 24.2 to 11.2 µs. At the maximum pump power of 69.5 mW, the EDFL produces the maximum pulse energy of 93.9 nJ. Besides showing good Q‐switching performance, the SA is easy to fabricate and cheap. This makes the proposed EDFL suitable for applications in metrology, environmental sensing, and biomedical diagnostics. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:2734–2737, 2014