Nanojoule-energy-level, polarization-maintaining, dissipative-soliton mode-locked thulium fiber laser at 1876 nm
Panuwat Srisamran, Ibrahim Abughazaleh, Matthew Gerard, Duanyang Xu, Yongmin Jung, Jing He, Jeremiah Marcellino, Boyang Mao, Andrea Ferrari, David J. Richardson, Lin Xu
Abstract
We report an environmentally robust, dissipative-soliton, mode-locked Tm-doped fiber laser operating in the short-wavelength infrared region at 1876 nm, using all-polarization-maintaining (all-PM) fibers. Self-starting, mode-locked operation is enabled by a single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) based saturable absorber (SA). Cavity dispersion is managed by using a commercially available PM dispersion compensating fiber (DCF). A PM fiber Lyot filter enables dissipative-soliton mode locking at a central wavelength of 1876 nm. The laser generates stable pulses at a repetition rate ∼ 19.2 MHz with an average power ∼ 21.5 mW, corresponding to a pulse energy ∼ 1.1 nJ. The output pulse has a duration of 4.2 ps and can be compressed down to 391 fs using a grating-based compressor. A higher pulse energy ∼ 3.2 nJ can be obtained with a compressed pulse width of 566 fs by varying the net cavity dispersion. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first nJ-energy-level, all-fiberized PM dissipative-soliton mode-locked Tm-doped fiber laser based on SWNT, with potential for applications in high-penetration nonlinear biomedical imaging microscopy.