We demonstrate passive mode-locking of a Tm,Ho-codoped crystalline laser operating on the Ho³⁺-ion transition ⁵I₇→⁵I₈ near 2 µm using a single-walled carbon nanotube saturable absorber. The Tm,Ho:KLu(WO₄)₂ laser emits nearly transform-limited pulses with duration of 2.8 ps at a repetition rate of 91 MHz. The output power amounts to 97 mW.

We demonstrate passive mode-locking of a Raman fiber laser using a nanotube-based saturable absorber coupled to a net normal dispersion cavity. This generates highly chirped 500 ps pulses. These are then compressed down to 2 ps, with 1.4 kW peak power, making it a simple wavelength-versatile source for various applications.

We report a novel polarimetric fiber laser sensor for magnetic-field-current measurement that is stable to variation of temperature and strain because it employs a Faraday rotating mirror. We obtained a sensitivity of 10.24 kHzyA with good linearity and greatly improved the signal-to-noise ratio by reducing the number of laser cavity modes with the help of a saturable absorber.

A high-performance AlGaInAs quantum-well saturable absorber is developed for passively Q-switched Er-Yb double-clad fiber lasers at 1560 nm. With an incident pump power of 13.5 W, an average output power of 1.26 W with a pulse repetition rate of 12 kHz is obtained. The maximum peak power is greater than 500 W.

The non-linear optical properties of SWNTs are at the centre of an expanding area of research. SWNTs are good saturable absorbers with an ultrafast recovery time, i.e. they are pass-high filters for light, becoming transparent for sufficiently high incident power [1, 2]. This makes them ideal components for a wide range of photonic devices, such as all-optical switches, pulse compressors, noise...

We present a comprehensive description of electrically-driven vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting diode lasers (VECSELs) at 980 nm, mode-locked by saturable absorber mirrors. A novel partially-integrated time-domain model combines accuracy and flexibility, allowing for a semi-analytical stability analysis of the compoundcavity modes, tracking the mode-locking onset and an optimization ana...

We report >13 MHz/mW pump power efficiency in increasing the repetition rate of passive harmonic mode-locking by engineering the soliton pulse energy in Er fiber lasers incorporating carbon nanotube saturable absorber. Stable pulses with a ∼5 GHz repetition rate and 40 dB of super-mode suppression are demonstrated with only ∼400 mW pump power in a single-clad fiber laser.

A device, composed of a nonlinear crystal and a dichroic mirror, features intensity-dependent reflection and may be used as a passive mode locker. The pulse shortening of a Gaussian light pulse due to reflection by this nonlinear mirror has been calculated and compared to that of a saturable absorber used for mode locking.

We demonstrate a 1.2-GHz repetition rate, diode-pumped, self-starting, 168-fs (FWHM) pulsewidth Yb:KYW laser mode-locked by a carbon nanotube (CNT) saturable absorber mirror. To our knowledge, this result corresponds to the highest repetition rate from CNT-mode-locked femtosecond bulk solid-state lasers, reaching the GHz regime for the first time.

We show that a monolithic and compact vertical cavity laser with intracavity saturable absorber can emit short excitable pulses. These calibrated optical pulses can be excited as a response to an input perturbation whose amplitude is above a certain threshold. Subnanosecond excitable response is promising for applications to novel all-optical devices for information processing or logical gates.