Nonlinear Optical Response of Gold Nanobipyramids for a Doubly Q-Switched Ho-Doped Laser at a Wavelength of 2.1 µm

Cheng Zhang; Dongzhou Wang; Shengjun Huang; Jimin Yang; Jie Liu; Jing Fang

doi:10.3390/nano11020535

Nonlinear Optical Response of Gold Nanobipyramids for a Doubly Q-Switched Ho-Doped Laser at a Wavelength of 2.1 µm

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2021 Feb 19;11(2):535. doi: 10.3390/nano11020535.

Authors

Cheng Zhang¹, Dongzhou Wang², Shengjun Huang¹, Jimin Yang¹, Jie Liu¹, Jing Fang¹

Affiliations

¹ Shandong Provincial Engineering and Technical Center of Light Manipulations and Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optics and Photonic Device, School of Physics and Electronics, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China.
² Jinan Institute of Quantum Technology, Jinan 250101, China.

Abstract

Gold nanobipyramids (Au-NBPs) were successfully fabricated using the seed-mediated growth method. The saturable absorption performance of the Au-NBPs at a 2-μm band wavelength was characterized. Using excellent-quality, mature Ho:YLF crystals, a doubly Q-switched (DQS) laser joining an acousto-optic modulator (AOM) with an Au-NBP saturable absorber (SA) was achieved. When the modulation rate of the AOM was 1 kHz, the shortest pulse width (54 ns) was attained, corresponding to the highest peak power (3.87 kW). This was compared with a singly Q-switched laser joining an AOM with an Au-NBP SA, whereby the maximum pulse width compression ratio was 15.2 and the highest peak power enhancement factor was 541.3. Our study has shown that Au-NBPs are a potential saturable absorption nanomaterial, and the DQS laser has the benefit of compressing the pulse width and increasing the peak power at a wavelength of 2.1 μm.

Keywords: 2.1 μm; Ho-doped laser; doubly Q-switched; gold nanobipyramids; saturable absorber.

Abstract

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