Laser mode-locking with saturable absorbers

Passive mode-locking in semiconductor lasers with saturable absorbers bandgap shifted through quantum well intermixing

Fabrication, characterization and mode locking application of single-walled carbon nanotube/polymer composite saturable absorbers

We present the fabrication of a high optical quality single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) composite film. The composites demonstrate strong saturable absorption at ∼1.5 μm, the spectral range for optical communications. By measuring the nonlinear transmission of a sub-picosecond pump pulse through the film, we were able to deduce a saturation fluence of ∼13.9 μJ/cm and...

Passive mode locking of ytterbium- and erbium-doped all-fiber lasers using graphene oxide saturable absorbers.

Broadband graphene oxide/PVA films were used as saturable absorbers (SAs) for mode locking erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) and ytterbium-doped fiber laser (YDFL) at 1.06 μm and 1.55 μm. They provide modulation depths of 3.15% and 6.2% for EDFL and YDFL, respectively. Stable self-starting mode-locked pulses are obtained for both lasers, confirming that the graphene oxide is cost-effective. We ha...

Saturable Absorber Mirrors For Passive Mode-locking

Saturable absorber mirrors (SAMs) are grown by low-temperature solid-source molecular beam epitaxy. The nonlinear absorber layer consists of one InGaAs quantum well. The devices have response times shorter than 10 ps and small non-saturable losses (less than 0.3%). SAMs with modulation depths between 0.6% and 2.0% were used to mode lock a Yb:KYW laser at around 1040 nm. The minimum achievable p...

Stability analysis of a laser with two modulated saturable absorbers

The stability analysis of a model for a laser system with two modulated saturable absorbers, each one modulated at a different frequency, is performed. The model is based on four equations describing the temporal evolution of the photon flux, the population inversion in the active media, and the saturation coefficients of each saturable absorber. The system dynamics is discussed in order to fin...