MoS2 saturable absorber for passive Q-switching of Yb and Tm microchip lasers

Identifier:  imarina:5610294

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/imarina5610294

Authors:  Serres, JM; Loiko, P; Mateos, X; Yu, HH; Zhang, HJ; Chen, YX; Petrov, V; Griebner, U; Yumashev, K; Aguiló, M; Díaz, F

Abstract:
� 2016 Optical Society of America. A multi-layer MoS2-based saturable absorber (SA) enables Q-switched operation of Yb and Tm microchip lasers. The saturation intensity of MoS2-SA is determined to be about ~0.5 MW/cm2. The Q-switched Tm laser generated 1.27 W at 1929 nm with a slope efficiency of 43% and conversion efficiency with respect to the continuous-wave mode as high as 81%. The pulse characteristics were 175 ns/7.5 μJ corresponding to a repetition rate of 170 kHz. With the Q-switched Yb laser, 220 ns/0.5 μJ pulses were achieved at 1030 nm. We show that using MoS2-SA at ~2 μm is advantageous as compared to multi-layer graphene. We also prove that MoS2-SA is more efficient at ~2 μm compared to ~1 μm due to a lower saturation intensity and higher fraction of the saturable loss.