We report the first mode-locked fiber laser to operate in the femtosecond regime well beyond 3 {mu}m. The laser uses dual-wavelength pumping and non-linear polarisation rotation to produce 3.5 {mu}m wavelength pulses with minimum duration of 580 fs at a repetition rate of 68 MHz. The pulse energy is 3.2 nJ, corresponding to a peak power of 5.5 kW.
In this paper we consider mid-infrared Raman lasers based on gas-filled hollow-core silica fibers and provide theoretical and experimental analysis of factors that limit the efficiency and output power of these lasers. As a result, we realized an eff
icient ns-pulsed 4.42 {mu}m Raman laser based on an 1H2-filled revolver silica fiber. Quantum efficiency as high as 36 % is achieved, and output average power as high as 250 mW is demonstrated. The possibilities of further improving the laser efficiency are discussed.
Rare-earth-doped fiber lasers are emerging as promising high-power mid-infrared sources for the 2.6-3.0 {mu}m and 3.3-3.8 {mu}m regions based on erbium and holmium ions. The intermediate wavelength range, however, remains vastly underserved, despite
prospects for important manufacturing and defense applications. Here, we demonstrate the potential of dysprosium-doped fiber to solve this problem, with a simple in-band pumped grating-stabilized linear cavity generating up to 1.06 W at 3.15 {mu}m. A slope efficiency of 73% with respect to launched power (77% relative to absorbed power) is achieved: the highest value for any mid-infrared fiber laser to date, to the best of our knowledge. Opportunities for further power and efficiency scaling are also discussed.
Black phosphorus, a newly emerged two-dimensional material, has attracted wide attention as novel photonic material. Here, multi-layer black phosphorus is successfully fabricated by liquid phase exfoliation method. By employing black phosphorus as sa
turable absorber, we demonstrate a passively Q-switched Er-doped ZBLAN fiber laser at the wavelength of 2.8 {mu}m. The modulation depth and saturation fluence of the black phosphorus saturable absorber are measured to be 15% and 9 {mu}J/cm2, respectively. The Q-switched fiber laser delivers a maximum average power of 485 mW with corresponding pulse energy of 7.7 {mu}J and pulse width of 1.18 {mu}s at repetition rate of 63 kHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to demonstrate that black phosphorus can realize Q-switching of 2.8-{mu}m fiber laser. Our research results show that black phosphorus is a promising saturable absorber for mid-infrared pulsed lasers.
We report an all-polarization-maintaining fiber optic approach to generating sub-2 cycle pulses at 2 {mu}m and a corresponding octave-spanning optical frequency comb. Our configuration leverages mature Er:fiber laser technology at 1.5 {mu}m to provid
e a seed pulse for a thulium-doped fiber amplifier that outputs 330 mW average power at 100 MHz repetition rate. Following amplification, nonlinear self-compression in fiber decreases the pulse duration to 9.5 fs, or 1.4 optical cycles. Approximately 32 % of the energy sits within the pulse peak, and the polarization extinction ratio is more than 15 dB. The spectrum of the ultrashort pulse spans from 1 {mu}m to beyond 2.4 {mu}m and enables direct measurement of the carrier-envelope offset frequency using only 12 mW, or ~3.5 % of the total power. Our approach employs only commercially-available fiber components, resulting in a turnkey amplifier design that is compact, and easy to reproduce in the larger community. Moreover, the overall design and self-compression mechanism are scalable in repetition rate and power. As such, this system should be useful as a robust frequency comb source in the near-infrared or as a pump source to generate mid-infrared frequency combs.
We investigate the buildup dynamics of broadband Q-switched noise-like pulse (QS-NLP) driven by slow gain dynamics in a microfiber-based passively mode-locked Yb-doped fiber laser. Based on shot-to-shot tracing of the transient optical spectra and qu
alitatively reproduced numerial simulation, we demonstrate that slow gain dynamics is deeply involved in the onset of such complex temporal and spectral instabilities of QS-NLP. The proposed dynamic model in this work could contribute to deeper insight of such nonlinear dynamics and transient dynamics simulation in ultrafast fiber laser.