Martinez Amos, Fuse Kazuyuki, Xu Bo, Yamashita Shinji
Department of Electronic Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.
Opt Express. 2010 Oct 25;18(22):23054-61. doi: 10.1364/OE.18.023054.
Mode-locked fiber lasers are currently undergoing a significant evolution towards higher pulse energies and shorter pulse durations. A key enabler in this progress has been the discovery of novel saturable absorbers (SA) such as carbon nanotubes (CNT) and graphene. The exceptional properties of CNTs as SA have been extensively studied in recent years. Graphene, a one atom thick planar sheet of carbon atoms arranged into a hexagonal lattice, has been recently proposed as an alternative to CNTs in several photonics applications. Here, we propose a method for the integration of graphene into a fiber ferrule using an optical deposition technique, which has been also employed for the deposition of CNT directly on the core of a fiber edge and in tapered fibers. We investigate and compare the optical properties of CNT-SA and graphene-SA fabricated by this optical deposition technique. Soliton-like, mode-locked lasing is confirmed using an erbium doped optical fiber in an all-fiber ring cavity laser configuration.
锁模光纤激光器目前正朝着更高脉冲能量和更短脉冲持续时间的方向经历重大发展。这一进展中的一个关键因素是发现了新型可饱和吸收体（SA），如碳纳米管（CNT）和石墨烯。近年来，碳纳米管作为可饱和吸收体的卓越性能得到了广泛研究。石墨烯是由碳原子排列成六边形晶格的单原子厚平面薄片，最近在一些光子学应用中被提议作为碳纳米管的替代品。在此，我们提出一种使用光学沉积技术将石墨烯集成到光纤插芯中的方法，该技术也已用于将碳纳米管直接沉积在光纤边缘的纤芯上以及锥形光纤中。我们研究并比较了通过这种光学沉积技术制造的碳纳米管 - 可饱和吸收体和石墨烯 - 可饱和吸收体的光学特性。在全光纤环形腔激光器配置中使用掺铒光纤确认了类孤子锁模激光振荡。
