Mid-infrared (MIR) fiber pulsed lasers are of tremendous application interest in eye-safe LIDAR, spectroscopy, chemi-cal detection and medicine. So far, these MIR lasers largely required bulk optical elements, complex free-space light alignment and large footprint, precluding compact all-fiber structure. Here, we proposed and demonstrated an all-fiberized structured gain-switched Ho3+-doped ZBLAN fiber laser operating around 2.9 μm. A home-made 1146 nm Raman fiber pulsed laser was utilized to pump highly concentrated single-cladding Ho3+-doped ZBLAN fiber with different lengths of 2 m or 0.25 m. A home-made MIR fiber mirror and a perpendicular-polished ZBLAN fiber end construct the all-fiberized MIR cavity. Stable gain-switched multiple states with a sub-pulse number tuned from 1 to 8 were observed. The effects of gain fiber length, pump power, pump repetition rate and output coupling ratio on performance of gain-switched pulses were further investigated in detail. The shortest pulse duration of 283 ns was attained with 10 kHz repetition rate. The pulsed laser, centered at 2.92 μm, had a maximum average output power of 54.2 mW and a slope efficiency of 10.12%. It is, to the best of our knowledge, the first time to demonstrate a mid-infrared gain-switched Ho3+:ZBLAN fiber laser with compact all-fiber structure.
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Opto-Electronic Advances
ISSN: 2096-4579
CN: 51-1781/TN
Opto-Electronic Advances is the open-access journal providing rapid publication for peer-reviewed articles that emphasize scientific and technology innovations in all aspects of optics and opto-electronics.
CN: 51-1781/TN
Opto-Electronic Advances is the open-access journal providing rapid publication for peer-reviewed articles that emphasize scientific and technology innovations in all aspects of optics and opto-electronics.
Mid-infrared all-fiber gain-switched pulsed laser at 3 μm
Author Affiliations
Correspondence: zqluo@xmu.edu.cn
First published at:May 21, 2020
Abstract
References
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Keywords:
Funds:
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61475129, 11674269), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 20720180057); Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Prov-ince for Distinguished Young Scientists (No. 2017J06016); Dr. Luo is grateful for supports from the Program for the Young Top Notch Talents of Fujian Province and the Program for the Nanqiang Young Top Notch Talents of Xiamen University.
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Zhang X J, Li W W, Li J, Xu H Y, Cai Z P et al. Mid-infrared all-fiber gain-switched pulsed laser at 3 μm. Opto-Electron Adv 3, 190032 (2020).
