title: Femtosecond mode-locked fiber laser employing a hollow optical fiber filled with carbon nanotube dispersion as saturable absorber.
abstract: We propose a novel in-line saturable absorber incorporating a hollow optical fiber (HOF) filled with single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) dispersion. The evanescent field of the propagating light in the ring core interacts with the SWCNT/polymer composite distributed over the whole length of the HOF. The proposed saturable absorber with all-fiber format offers the robust and long nonlinear interaction along the waveguide direction expecting the increase of the threshold for optical and thermal damages with simple fabrication process. Low concentration SWCNT/polymer composite exhibiting very broadband resonant absorption around 1.5 microm with low scattering loss is prepared and based on this, we successfully demonstrate the passively mode-locked fiber laser including the SWCNT-filled HOF where the spectral bandwidth and the pulse duration of the laser output are 5.5 nm and 490 fs, respectively, with a repetition rate of 18.5 MHz.
authors.affiliation: Division of Energy Systems Research, Ajou University, Yongtong-gu, Suwon, Korea.
authors.forename: Sun Young
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Fabian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rotermund
authors.forename: Hojoong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.forename: Kyunghwan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Oh
authors.forename: Dong-Il
authors.initials: DI
authors.lastname: Yeom
mesh_terms: D000042:Absorption; D004867:Equipment Design; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology; D007834:Lasers; D008027:Light; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon / Q000737:chemistry*; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D055100:Optical Fibers; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D017785:Photons; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon; D011108:Polymers