Wideband tunable Q-switched fiber laser using graphene as a saturable absorber

Abstract

An ultra-wide wavelength tuning range, which covers three different band regions consisting of the S-, C-, and L-bands, is proposed and demonstrated for a graphene-based Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser using a tunable bandpass filter as the wavelength tuning and filtering mechanism. A 3 m length of erbium-doped fiber is used as the gain medium in a ring laser cavity configuration, with absorption coefficients of between 11 and 13 dB m−1 at 980 nm and about 18 dB m−1 at 1550 nm. The tuning range of the Q-switching pulses covers a wide wavelength range of 58 nm, which spans from 1512.5 nm to 1570.5 nm. In addition, the lasing and Q-switching thresholds are considerably low, with respective values of ∼11.0 mW and ∼18.4 mW. A repetition rate of 55.3 kHz is obtained at the maximum pump power of 100.4 mW, together with pulse width and pulse energy of 1.6 μs and 25.8 nJ, respectively.