All-fiber Yb-doped laser mode-locked by nanotubes

Zhang, UZ and Popa, D and Sun, Z and Hasan, T and Ferrari, AC and Ilday, FO (2013) All-fiber Yb-doped laser mode-locked by nanotubes. 2013 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe and International Quantum Electronics Conference, CLEO/Europe-IQEC 2013.

Abstract

Single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and graphene have emerged as promising saturable absorbers (SAs), due to their broad operation bandwidth and fast recovery times [1-3]. However, Yb-doped fiber lasers mode-locked using CNT and graphene SAs have generated relatively long pulses. All-fiber cavity designs are highly favored for their environmental robustness. Here, we demonstrate an all-fiber Yb-doped laser based on a SWNT saturable absorber, which allows generation of 8.7 ps-long pulses, externally compressed to 118 fs. To the best of our knowledge, these are the shortest pulses obtained with SWNT SAs from a Yb-doped fiber laser. © 2013 IEEE.