Q-switched fiber lasers emitting at around 3 μm have been widely applied in various scientific and industrial fields, such as molecular spectroscopy, laser surgery, material processing, remote sensing, and mid-infrared (mid-IR) supercontinuum source generation. Au nanocages (Au-NCs) have attracted much attention recently due to their outstanding saturable absorption properties including broadband absorption, ultrafast optical response (a few picoseconds), and large third-order optical nonlinearity coefficient that caused by local surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). We propose and demonstrate a tunable Er3+ doped ZBLAN fiber laser using Au-NCs as a Q-switcher for the first time. Nonlinear absorption of the Au-NCs was measured by a home-made Ho3+/Pr3+ co-doped mode-locked fiber laser at 2850 nm. The measured modulation depth, saturation intensity and non-saturation loss are 10.73%, 0.11 MW/cm2 and 3.26%, respectively. The central wavelength of the Q-switched pulses could be tuned across 54.1 nm (from 2753.0 to 2807.1 nm). The Q-switched fiber laser delivers a maximum average power of 253.7 mW with corresponding pulse energy of 4.06 μJ and pulse width of 1.30 μs at repetition rate of 62.5 kHz. Our work shows the Au-NCs are promising saturable absorbers (SAs) for 3 μm mid-infrared (mid-IR) pulse generation.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.