High-quality and Large-size Topological Insulator Bi2Te3-Gold Saturable Absorber Mirror for Mode-Locking Fiber Laser

Giant ultrafast optical nonlinearities of annealed Sb2Te3 layers

The optimization of thin Sb₂Te₃ films in order to obtain giant ultrafast optical nonlinearities is reported. The ultrafast nonlinearities of the thin film layers are studied by the Z-scan technique. Giant saturable absorption is obtained, which is the highest ever reported, by means of the Z-scan technique.

Femto/nano-second switchable passively mode-locked fiber laser with analytic modeling by the cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau equation

We report a passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser with pulse widths switchable from 473 fs to 76.8 ns, where the fundamental mode-locking, noise-like pulse, nanosecond mode-locking, and dual-width mode-locking (DML) are obtained by adjusting a polarization controller. Co-existence of femto- and nano-second pulses in DML is attributed to the gain balancing. Analytic modeling of the fiber laser with the cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau equation is presented, in which the pulse widths are calculated as functions of dispersion, self-phase modulation (SPM), cubic saturable absorption (SA), and quintic SA. The generation of nanosecond pulses is caused by the weakened intracavity pulse-shortening strength, the reduced effective SPM, and the inclusion of quintic SA in the laser cavity.

Optical nonlinearity engineering of a bismuth telluride saturable absorber and application of a pulsed solid state laser therein

Saturable absorbers (SAs) have interesting applications for the realization of pulsed lasers in various wavelengths of fiber and solid-state lasers. Topological insulators (TIs) have been recently discovered to feature saturable absorption due to their unique band structure. In this study, high-purity layers of Bi₂Te₃ thin film SA have been successfully prepared using the spin coating-coreduction approach (SCCA). Compared with the typical method of preparing SAs, the SCCA can be used to prepare topological insulator saturable absorbers (TISAs) with high optical quality, large area consistency, and controllable thickness, which is critical for pulsed lasers. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first observation and discussion of clear thickness-dependent optical nonlinearity. In this study, a Q-switched bulk Nd:YAG laser is demonstrated and investigated using the prepared TISA as the absorber. The timing jitter and amplitude fluctuation of the stable pulse laser indicated that the SCCA is suitable for fabricating a Bi₂Te₃ SA. Furthermore, the SCCA enables the establishment of a pulsing laser through saturation intensity engineering.