Ytterbium-doped Q-switched fiber laser based upon manganese dioxide (MnO2) saturable absorber

Haroldo T Hattori; Abdul Khaleque; Liming Liu; Michael R Greck

doi:10.1364/AO.55.009226

Ytterbium-doped Q-switched fiber laser based upon manganese dioxide (MnO₂) saturable absorber

Appl Opt. 2016 Nov 10;55(32):9226-9231. doi: 10.1364/AO.55.009226.

Authors

Haroldo T Hattori, Abdul Khaleque, Liming Liu, Michael R Greck

PMID: 27857311
DOI: 10.1364/AO.55.009226

Abstract

Manganese dioxide (MnO₂) is an abundant material that is widely used in many devices, such as alkaline batteries. At infrared frequencies, MnO₂ is lossy and strongly absorbs light. These characteristics make MnO₂ a potential candidate as a low-cost saturable absorber in Q-switched lasers. In this paper, we examine the performance of MnO₂ as a saturable absorber in an ytterbium-doped Q-switched fiber laser: we show that it can produce pulses with durations ranging from 300 to 1800 ns.