Generation of large optical bistability in a single-frequency Tm-doped fiber laser using saturable absorber
Affiliation
College of Optical Sciences, University of ArizonaIssue Date
2021
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SPIECitation
Zhang, J., Sheng, Q., Zhang, L., Sun, S., Shi, C., Fu, S., Shi, W., & Yao, J. (2021). Generation of large optical bistability in a single-frequency Tm-doped fiber laser using saturable absorber. Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, 11665.Rights
© 2021 SPIE.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
We observed a large optical bistability in a single-frequency thulium fiber laser with ring cavity configuration. A piece of unpumped Tm-doped fiber served as nonlinear saturable absorber (SA), which also acted as a narrow-bandpass filter by forming self-induced gratings with counter-propagate lasers and enabled single-frequency laser operation at 1720 nm. Due to the large absorption cross section of thulium ions at 1720 nm, the unpumped Tm-doped fiber has large variable losses, hence resulting in strong optical bistability. With 0.75-m SA fiber, a 4.8-W wide bistable region was achieved. The evolution of bistable region with different lengths of SA fibers was investigated. The bistable region became narrower with decreasing SA fiber length, and totally disappeared at a SA fiber length of 0.15 m. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first observation of optical bistability in thulium fiber lasers. © 2021 SPIE.Note
Immediate accessISSN
0277-786XISBN
9781510000000Version
Final published versionae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1117/12.2578912