All-fiber quasi-continuous wave supercontinuum generation in single-mode high-nonlinear fiber pumped by submicrosecond pulse with low peak power

We demonstrate quasi-continuous wave supercontinuum generation in a single-mode high-nonlinear fiber (HNLF) in 1.55 μm band, which is pumped by the amplified passively Q-switched submicrosecond pulse. The pump wavelength is in the normal dispersion region of HNLF and near to the zero-dispersion wavelength. The broad SC spectral range from 1200 to 2260 nm is obtained with the low pump peak power of 17.8 W. The 20 dB bandwidth of 922 nm from 1285 to 2207 nm is obtained with the assumption that the peak near 1560 nm is filtered. The spectrum density for the 20 dB bandwidth is from -27.5 to -7.5 dbm/nm.     

Semiconductor saturable absorber mirror passively Q-switched fiber laser near 2 μm

A passively Q-switched fiber laser near 2?μm is achieved with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as a saturable absorber. Stable Q-switched pulses are generated from an extremely compact setup with a central wavelength of 1958.2?nm. Under the bidirectional pump configuration, the repetition rate of the fiber laser can be widely tuned from 20 to 80?kHz by increasing the pump power at the same time the pulse width decreases from 1?μs to 490?ns. When the incident pump power is 1.3?W, the average output power, the pulse repetition rate, the pulse width, and the highest single pulse energy are 91?mW, 80?kHz, 490?ns, and 1.14?μJ, respectively. To further optimize the system configuration, the pulse width can be reduced to 362?ns when the cavity length is reduced.     

A 1319 nm diode-side-pumped Nd:YAG laser Q-switched with graphene oxide

We have demonstrated a diode-side-pumped Q-switched Nd:YAG laser operating at 1319?nm with a saturable absorber of graphene oxide fabricated by the vertical evaporation method. The 1319?nm Q-switched laser pulses were realized with average output power of 820 mW, pulse width of 2?μs and repetition rate of 35?kHz. The pulse energy and peak power were 23.4?μJ and 11.7?W, respectively when the optical pump power was 232?W. The experimental results indicate that graphene oxide is an effective saturable absorber for Q-switched lasers.     

Diode-pumped passively mode-locked Nd:GYSGG laser at 1061 nm with periodically poled LiNbO3 nonlinear mirror

ABSTRACT

We report a nonlinear-mirror mode-locked diode-pumped solid-state Nd:GYSGG laser operating at 1061?nm. The nonlinear mirror comprises a periodically poled LiNbO₃(PPLN) crystal and a dichroic mirror. Continuous-wave mode-locked laser with an output power of 450?mw is obtained under a diode pump power of 5.5?W at 808?nm. The repetition rate of the mode-locked laser is 97.1?MHz and the bandwidth of spectral is 1.3?nm. Considering the group velocity mismatch (GVM) of PPLN, we estimate the minimum pulse width is about 9?ps.     

Ultrabroad supercontinuum generation in tellurite equiangular spiral photonic crystal fiber

Simulations are presented of a very broad and flat supercontinuum (SC) in both the normal and anomalous group velocity dispersion regimes of the same equiangular spiral photonic crystal fiber at low pumping powers. For a pump wavelength at 1557?nm and average pump power of 11.2?mW, we obtained a bandwidth >3?μm (970?nm–4100?nm) at 40 dB below the peak spectral power with fiber dispersion ～2.1?ps/km nm at 1557?nm. In the same fiber, at pump wavelength 1930?nm and average pump power of 12?mW the SC bandwidth was more than two octaves (1300?nm–3700?nm) and dispersion was ～1.3?ps/km nm at 1930?nm. This demonstrates the potential use of the fiber for multi-wavelength pumping with commercially available sources at fairly low power.     

Widely tunable optical filter with variable bandwidth based on the thermal effect on cholesteric liquid crystals

A widely tunable optical filter with variable bandwidth has been demonstrated based on the thermal effect on cholesteric liquid crystals. The central wavelength can be widely tuned from 826 to 517?nm and the bandwidth can be varied from 10 to 70?nm. It will have potential applications in many fields, especially in telecommunications and multi-spectral/hyper-spectral imaging systems.     

Nickel oxide nanoparticles thin film saturable absorber for 1-micron pulsed all-fibre lasers operation

A passive Q-switched and mode-locked ytterbium-doped fibre laser (YDFL) pulse generation using a nickel oxide thin film as a saturable absorber is reported. The nickel oxide nanoparticle thin film was fabricated by a simple processing technique, and it has a modulation depth of 39% and saturation intensity of 0.04 MW/cm². The saturable absorber was constructed by inserting a small piece of the film between two fibre ferrules. Then it was integrated in a YDFL cavity. The Q-switching operation started at a threshold pump power of 117.73 mW with an initial wavelength of 1073.5 nm. When the pump power was raised from 117.73 to 133 mW, the repetition rate grew from 9.5 to 15.8 kHz. The pulses had a maximum pulse energy of 478 nJ. Furthermore, a stable self-started mode-locked pulse was also succesfully generated at the threshold pump power of 97.3 mW. The central wavelength and repetition rate of the laser were 1037.72 nm and 23 MHz, respectively. The maximum pulse energy of 0.56 nJ and a peak power of 26.4 W were recorded at a pump power of 137.5 mW.     

High efficiency terahertz-wave photonic crystal fiber optical parametric oscillator

We theoretically propose phase matched terahertz (THz)-wave generation via degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) in a fiber optical parametric oscillator (FOPO) with our newly designed photonic crystal fiber (PCF). Perfect phase matching is realized when we locate the pump wavelength in the normal group-velocity dispersion (GVD) regime. The generated THz-wave can be tuned from 4.7578 to 5.9015?THz by varying the pump wavelength. Moreover, peak power of 27.38?W at 5.9015?THz with conversion efficiency of 1.37% is realized when the pump peak power of 2000?W is at 4.675?μm in our FOPO.     

Supercontinuum generation from a sub-megahertz repetition rate femtosecond pulses based on nonlinear polarization rotation technique

A means of supercontinuum (SC) generation is proposed and demonstrated, using femtosecond mode-locked pulses with sub-megahertz repetition rate based on the nonlinear polarization rotation technique. Total cavity length is approximately 522?m, which includes an additional 500?m single mode fiber (SMF) and the fundamental repetition rate obtained is 404.5?kHz. The mode-locked spectrum has a central wavelength of approximately 1600?nm and a 3?dB bandwidth of 16?nm, which falls within the L-band region. The threshold power for the mode-locked operation is achieved at approximately 52?mW. At pump power of 74?mW, the measured pulse width, pulse energy, and average output power are 70?fs, 18.3?nJ and 7.4?mW respectively. The generated pulses are amplified by a 72.44?mW erbium-doped fiber amplifier before being injected into a 100?m long highly non-linear fiber as the nonlinear medium to generate the SC spectrum. The obtained SC spectrum spans from 1250?nm to more than 1700?nm, with bandwidths of 450?nm at a ?70?dBm output power level. For comparison purpose, the 500?m SMF is removed from the setup and similar measurements are then repeated for this case.     

Spatial beam shaping of ultrashort laser pulses: theory and experiment

We studied the spatial intensity profile of an ultrashort laser pulse passing through a laser beam shaping system, which uses diffractive optical elements to reshape a Gaussian beam profile into a flat-topped distribution. Both dispersion and nonlinear self-phase modulation are included in the theoretical model. Our calculation shows that this system works well for ultrashort pulses (approximately 100 fs) when the pulse peak intensity is less than 5 x 10(11) W/cm2. Experimental results are presented for 136 fs pulses at 800 nm wavelength from a Ti:sapphire laser with a 6 nJ pulse energy. We also studied the effects of lateral misalignment, beam-size deviation, and defocusing on the energy fluence profile.     

High-power tunable narrow-linewidth Ti:sapphire laser at repetition rate of 1 kHz

We report a high-power tunable narrow-bandwidth Ti:sapphire laser at a repetition rate of 1?kHz. The spectral linewidth of 0.4?pm with wavelength tuning range from 780?nm to 820?nm is obtained by a spectrum-compressing technique that consists of one grating and four fused silica prisms in the oscillator cavity. This narrow-bandwidth seed from the oscillator is further amplified to 6.5?W with pulse duration of 16?ns under the pumper power of 22?W. This high-power laser with narrow linewidth is candidate for isotope separation and accuracy spectrum analysis.     

A novel optical device with wide-bandwidth wavelength conversionand an optical sampling experiment at 200 Gbit/s

This paper reports the characteristics of our proposed prototype optical parametric diffuser (OPD). An OPD is based on the theory of four-wave mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). However, to improve the conversion bandwidth and FWM efficiency, the gain bandwidth is spread and the gain peak wavelengths are set to a wavelength near the FWM light on the short-wavelength side by combining different MQW active layers. We measured the optical gain characteristics; the fiber-to fiber gain was 16.1 dB and the gain bandwidth over 8 dB was 117 nm when driven at 200 mA dc, and 190 nm when driven by an 800 mA pulse current. In a wavelength-conversion experiment, a high conversion efficiency of ⩾-20 dB was obtained across a detuning wavelength bandwidth of 43 nm. A clear waveform was obtained in an optical sampling experiment to measure 200 Gbit/s optical data sequences     

Diode-pumped passively mode-locked Nd:YAG laser at 1338 nm with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror

We demonstrate a diode-end-pumped passively mode-locked 1338 nm Nd:YAG laser with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror. At the absorbed pump power of 8.89 W, an average output power of 1.12 W was obtained with a slope efficiency of 14%. The pulse width was 22.4 ps with a repetition rate of 63.9 MHz, corresponding to a peak power of 782 W. In addition, the bandwidth of the mode-locking spectrum is as narrow as 20.44 GHz, which shows the potential application in long-distance ranging and fiber information transmission because of the low dispersion of these ultrashort pulses.     

Wideband tunable Q-switched fiber laser using graphene as a saturable absorber

An ultra-wide wavelength tuning range, which covers three different band regions consisting of the S-, C-, and L-bands, is proposed and demonstrated for a graphene-based Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser using a tunable bandpass filter as the wavelength tuning and filtering mechanism. A 3?m length of erbium-doped fiber is used as the gain medium in a ring laser cavity configuration, with absorption coefficients of between 11 and 13 dB?m^?1 at 980?nm and about 18?dB?m^?1 at 1550?nm. The tuning range of the Q-switching pulses covers a wide wavelength range of 58?nm, which spans from 1512.5?nm to 1570.5?nm. In addition, the lasing and Q-switching thresholds are considerably low, with respective values of ～11.0?mW and ～18.4?mW. A repetition rate of 55.3?kHz is obtained at the maximum pump power of 100.4?mW, together with pulse width and pulse energy of 1.6?μs and 25.8?nJ, respectively.     

Generation of isolated attosecond pulses using unipolar and laser fields

A new scheme to generate isolated attosecond pulses is presented that involves the use of a laser field and of a unipolar field. The laser field has a pulse of intensity I = 1.5×10¹⁴ W cm^?2 and wavelength λ = 820 nm. The unipolar pulse is an asymmetric pulse consisting of a sharp peak, lasting approximately half a laser period, i.e. nearly 1.4 fs, followed by a long and shallow tail. We show that on combining these two fields, it is possible to generate isolated attosecond pulses as short as 1/10 of a laser period, i.e. approximately 270 as. Moreover, it is argued that this scheme is robust either against small variations of the laser envelope, or against small changes in the delay between the laser pump and the unipolar pulse.     

Graphene oxide saturable absorber on golden reflective film for Tm:YAP Q-switched mode-locking laser at 2 μm

A diode-pumped Tm:YAlO₃ (Tm:YAP), solid-state Q-switched mode-locking (QML) laser was achieved for the first time by using a graphene oxide saturable absorber on gold reflective film. A pulse width for mode-locking inside the Q-switch envelope of 2?ns with a repetition rate of 156.25?MHz has been obtained at the central wavelength of 1973?nm (32?nm full width at half maximum). The measured maximum average output power amounts to 464 mW under an incident pump power of 9.52?W. By using graphene oxide saturable absorber on golden reflective film instead of the tail end cavity mirror, we not only achieved a broadened spectral region 2?µm laser, but also deepened the modulation of the QML.     

Influence of spectral broadening on femtosecond wavelength conversion based on four-wave mixing in silicon waveguides

Femtosecond wavelength conversion in the telecommunication bands via four-wave mixing in a 1.5 mm long silicon rib waveguide is theoretically investigated. Compared with picosecond pulses, the spectra are greatly broadened for the femtosecond pulses due to self-phase modulation and cross-phase modulation in the four-wave mixing process, and it is difficult to achieve a wavelength converter when the pump and signal pulse widths are close to or less than 100 fs in the telecommunication bands because of the spectral overlap. The influence of the spectral broadening on the conversion efficiency is also investigated. The conversion bandwidth of 220 nm and peak conversion efficiency of -8 dB are demonstrated by using 500 fs pulses with higher efficiency than the picosecond pulse-pumped efficiency when the repetition rate is 100 GHz.     

Short-pulse amplification at 745 nm in Ti:sapphire with a continuously tunable regenerative amplifier

We describe the design of a continuously tunable Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier that is capable of sustaining amplification over a wavelength range from 730 nm to more than 800 nm. The amplifier cavity is tuned with a prism pair in combination with a spherical mirror. It sustains an oscillation bandwidth of 5 nm and produces a chirped output pulse energy of 1.2 mJ compressible to a duration of 140 fs at 745 nm. We present a calculation of the theoretical bandwidth.     

Seeded femtosecond optical parametric amplification in the mid-infrared spectral region above 3 mum

Femtosecond optical parametric amplification that results in microjoule mid-infrared pulses at wavelengths exceeding 3 mum is demonstrated. Narrow-band quasi-cw seeding at the signal wavelength is applied to ensure the generation of nearly transform-limited femtosecond pulses at the idler wavelength. The broad bandwidth of the parametric amplification provided by pumping with femtosecond pulses from a Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier at high intensity results in idler pulse durations shorter than the pump pulse length. The potentials of three nonlinear optical crystals that belong to the potassium titanyl phosphate family are comparatively studied. At 1-kHz repetition rate our all-solid-state system produces highly synchronized ~100-fs pulses in the spectral range between 3 and 4 mum.     

Dispersion engineering of a silicon-nanocrystal-based slot waveguide for broadband wavelength conversion

A proposal for broadband wavelength conversion using four-wave mixing is presented based on a slot waveguide with silicon nanocrystals (Si-nc's) as the optical nonlinear material. The dispersion of the waveguide is engineered to realize a flat dispersion as well as a small effective mode area for better nonlinear interaction by optimizing the waveguide dimensions. The conversion performance is synthetically analyzed and numerical results show that a bandwidth of over 400?nm and an efficiency of -2.38?dB can be achieved using a pump power of 150?mW in a 4?mm long Si-nc slot waveguide with slot width of 50?nm, slab width of 310?nm, and height of 305?nm.