Wide-band, passively Q-switched Yb- and Tm-doped fibre laser using WSSe saturable absorber

ABSTRACT

A wide-band, passively Q-switched fibre lasers based on ytterbium- and thulium-doped fibre gain medium are proposed and demonstrated. The lasers employ a transition metal dichalcogenide, tungsten sulphoselenide as a saturable absorber (SA) which is prepared by mechanical exfoliation technique. By integrating the SA in the laser cavities, self-starting Q-switched at 1038 and 1982 nm are obtained. The generated pulses exhibit a microsecond pulse duration with few kilohertz repetition rate. The proposed SA has high potential as a new material to cater to the needs of various scientific, industrial and biomedical applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Passively Q-switched
• ytterbium-doped fibre laser
• thulium-doped fibre laser
• transition metal dichalcogenide
• WSSe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia under the grants LRGS (2015) / NGOD / KPT / UM and GA 010–2014 (ULUNG) and the University of Malaya (Universiti Malaya) under the grant RU 001–2017.