Single-walled carbon nanotube solution-based saturable absorbers for mode-locked fiber laser

The report proposed a saturable absorber based on a D-shaped fiber embedded in a single-walled carbon nanotube solution. Such a saturable absorber solution method with a D-shaped fiber has the virtues of good antioxidant capacity, excellent scattering resistance, high heat dissipation, and high damage threshold. The nonsaturable loss of this kind of saturable absorber was evaluated to be 3%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the lowest value compared with other carbon nanotube saturable absorbers. By incorporating the saturable absorber into a Yb-doped fiber laser cavity, a mode-locked fiber laser was achieved with a central wavelength of 1054.16 nm. The repetition rate was 23 MHz with a signal-to-noise ratio of 60 dB, and the pulse duration was measured to be 194 ps. The long-term working stability of working is also good. The results indicated that the solution method with a D-shaped fiber possesses a potential for fiber laser stability applications. (C) 2015 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)