Mode-locked ytterbium-doped fiber laser with zinc phthalocyanine thin film saturable absorber

Rawan S M Soboh; Ahmed H H Al-Masoodi; Fuad N A Erman; Abtisam H H Al-Masoodi; Bilal Nizamani; Hamzah Arof; Retna Apsari; Sulaiman Wadi Harun

doi:10.1007/s12200-022-00027-2

Mode-locked ytterbium-doped fiber laser with zinc phthalocyanine thin film saturable absorber

Front Optoelectron. 2022 Jun 13;15(1):28. doi: 10.1007/s12200-022-00027-2.

Authors

Rawan S M Soboh¹, Ahmed H H Al-Masoodi², Fuad N A Erman¹, Abtisam H H Al-Masoodi³, Bilal Nizamani¹, Hamzah Arof¹, Retna Apsari⁴, Sulaiman Wadi Harun^{5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50630, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
² Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering Department, College of Engineering, The American University of Kurdistan, Duhok, 42001, Iraq.
³ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
⁴ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Airlangga University, 60115, Surabaya, Indonesia. retna-a@fst.unair.ac.id.
⁵ Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50630, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. swharun@um.edu.my.
⁶ Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Airlangga University, 60115, Surabaya, Indonesia. swharun@um.edu.my.

Abstract

A stable mode-locked laser was demonstrated using a newly developed zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc) thin film as passive saturable absorber (SA) in ytterbium-doped fiber laser (YDFL). The ZnPc thin film was obtained using a casting method and then inserted between the two fiber ferrules of a YDFL ring cavity to generate mode-locked pulses. The resulting pulsed laser operated at a wavelength of 1034.5 nm having a repetition rate of 3.3 MHz. At pump power of 277 mW, the maximum output power and pulse energy are achieved at 4.92 mW and 1.36 nJ, respectively. ZnPc has a high chemical and photochemical stability, and its significance for use as a potential SA in a mode-locked laser is reported in this work.

Keywords: Mode-locking; Saturable absorber (SA); Ytterbium-doped fiber laser (YDFL); Zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc) thin film.