Tunable Ytterbium-Doped Mode-Locked Fiber Laser Based on Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Abstract

A tunable mode-locked ytterbium-doped fiber laser with a tuning range of 55 nm is demonstrated in this paper. Currently, this is the widest tuning range for all-normal dispersion (ANDi) ytterbium-doped mode-locked fiber laser based on new-material saturable absorber (SA). The combined effects of the single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) SA and a reflective grating significantly improved laser performance: broad tuning range, superb stability, and repeatability. The experimental results indicate that SWCNTs can be a brilliant SA for achieving mode-locking operation in ANDi regime at 1 μm, with pulsewidth of 2.4 ps and optical spectral bandwidth of 1.6 nm across the full tuning range. The laser also shows that the optical spectrum can be tuned accurately and continuously, which gives possibility for various applications such as optical communications, spectroscopy, time-resolved measurement, etc.