Open AccessQ‐switched Brillouin fibre laser with multi‐wall carbon nanotube saturable absorber
Author(s) -
Zarei Arman,
Tiu Z. C.,
Ahmad F.,
Ahmad Harith,
Harun Sulaiman Wadi
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
iet optoelectronics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.379
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1751-8776
pISSN - 1751-8768
DOI - 10.1049/iet-opt.2014.0041
Subject(s) - saturable absorption , carbon nanotube , materials science , brillouin zone , laser , brillouin scattering , nanotube , fiber laser , optics , optoelectronics , composite material , physics , wavelength
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.