Silver Nanoplate Composites as Nonlinear Saturable Absorbers for a Q-Switched Laser

Abstract

Metal nanomaterials have promising applications in ultrafast photonics due to their broadband operation, large third-order nonlinear susceptibility, and ultrafast recovery time. We realized a Q-switched pulsed erbium-doped fiber laser based on a silver nanoplate polyvinyl alcohol film as a saturable absorber. This film, with a modulation depth of 15.7%, was integrated into a fiber laser by means of a sandwich structure. We obtained Q-switched pulses in the 1.5-μm band, which plays an important role in telecommunications and atmospheric detection. Stable Q-switched pulses were obtained at the pump power of 135 mW, with a single pulse energy of 33.8 nJ, a pulse width of 2.3 μs, a repetition rate of 62.4 kHz, and a signal-to-noise ratio of about 45 dB. When increasing the pump power up to a maximum value of 246 mW, the maximum single pulse energy of 57.8 nJ was achieved. This study first demonstrates the potential of silver nanoplates as saturable absorbers in generating stable laser pulses with high energy.

Passively Q-switched Er-doped fiber laser based on carbon-doped silver nanoparticles saturable absorber prepared using laser ablation method

“…It was found that the lowest pulse duration of 11.85 µs, a repetition rate of 28.4 kHz, an output power of 0.78 mW, and 55 dB SNR was achieved at a maximum pump of 37.8 mW. Recently, Lyu et al [24] realized an EDFL with a minimum pulse duration of 2.3 µs, a maximum repetition of 62.4 kHz, a highest of 45 dB SNR, and a maximum of 0.605 mW output power. Previous reports indicate that the implementation of the SAs inside the laser cavity could be in the form of D-shaping fiber coated with electron beam deposition [18,20] or a PVA-based thin film [19,[21][22][23][24].…”

“…Recently, Lyu et al [24] realized an EDFL with a minimum pulse duration of 2.3 µs, a maximum repetition of 62.4 kHz, a highest of 45 dB SNR, and a maximum of 0.605 mW output power. Previous reports indicate that the implementation of the SAs inside the laser cavity could be in the form of D-shaping fiber coated with electron beam deposition [18,20] or a PVA-based thin film [19,[21][22][23][24]. Most recently, the pulsed laser deposition technique [25][26][27] has been implemented for the fabrication of SAs which is much more stable relative to those prepared using conventional techniques.…”