Tunable Gold Nanorods Q-Switcher for Pulsed Er-Doped Fiber Laser

• Published in: IEEE photonics journal Vol. 9; no. 5; pp. 1 - 9
• Main Authors: Jiang, Guobao, Jin, Yu, Miao, Lili, Du, Lin, Kang, Zhe, Huang, Bin, Zhao, Chujun, Wen, Shuangchun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-10-2017
• Subjects: Absorption; Erbium-doped fiber lasers; Fiber lasers; Kerr effect; Modulation; Nonlinear optics; Optical fiber couplers; Optical fiber devices; Optical fiber dispersion; plasmonics; Q-switched lasers; tunable lasers
• ISSN: 1943-0655; 1943-0647
• DOI: 10.1109/JPHOT.2017.2751252

We prepared the gold nanorods (GNRs) via seed-mediated growth method, and fabricated the fiber-compatible saturable absorption device with it. We found that the nonlinear absorption behavior of the fiber-compatible GNRs saturable absorber can be tuned by introducing an external modulation laser. With the modulating power varying from 0 to 100 mW, the modulation depth of the saturable absorber could be tuned from 22.85% to 17.91%. Based on the all-optical modulation method with GNRs, the pulse width and repetition rate tunable Q-switched pulses can be delivered from an erbium-doped fiber laser.