Title :
Q-switched Brillouin fibre laser with multi-wall carbon nanotube saturable absorber
Author :
Zarei, Arman ; Tiu, Z.C. ; Ahmad, F. ; Ahmad, Harith ; Harun, Sulaiman Wadi
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Abstract :
A Q-switched Brillouin fibre laser (BFL) is successfully demonstrated using multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) embedded in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) film as a passive saturable absorber (SA) for the first time. The SA is obtained by sandwiching the developed MWCNTs-PVA film between two FC/PC fibre connectors after depositing index-matching gel onto the fibre ends. The proposed Q-switched BFL incorporates a 5 km long dispersion shifted fibre in a ring cavity structure to generate Stokes shifted by 0.08 nm from the Brillouin pump wavelength. The BFL starts to generate a Q-switching pulse train at threshold pump power of 5 dBm. As the BP power is varied from 5.0 to 6.0 dBm, the repetition rate of the Q-switched BFL exhibits an increasing trend from 27.75 to 30.21 kHz, whereas the pulse width exhibits a decreasing trend from 3.25 μs to 1.11 μs. The maximum pulse energy of 0.13 nJ is obtained at maximum BP power of 6.0 dBm.
Keywords :
Brillouin spectra; Q-switching; carbon nanotubes; fibre lasers; laser cavity resonators; nanophotonics; optical fibre couplers; optical fibre dispersion; optical films; optical polymers; optical pulse generation; optical pumping; optical saturable absorption; refractive index; ring lasers; Brillouin pump wavelength; C; FC-PC fibre connectors; MWCNT-PVA film; Q-switched Brillouin fibre laser; Q-switching pulse train generation; Stokes shift generation; distance 5 km; energy 0.13 nJ; index-matching gel deposition; long dispersion shifted fibre; multiwall carbon nanotube saturable absorber; polyvinyl alcohol film; ring cavity structure; time 3.25 mus to 1.11 mus; wavelength 0.08 nm;
Journal_Title :
Optoelectronics, IET
DOI :
10.1049/iet-opt.2014.0041
