MoS2 saturable absorber for single frequency oscillation of highly Yb-doped fiber laser

Abstract

© 2016 Chinese Optics Letters. In this Letter, a single-frequency fiber laser using a molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) thin film as a saturable absorber is demonstrated. We use a short length of highly Yb-doped fiber as the gain medium and a fiber ferrule with MoS 2 film adhered to it by index matching gel (IMG) that acts as the saturable absorber. The saturable absorber can be used to discriminate and select the single longitudinal modes. The maximum output power of the single-frequency fiber laser is 15.3 mW at a pump power of 130 mW and the slope efficiency is 15.3%. The optical signal-to-noise ratio and the laser linewidths are ~60 dB and 5.89 kHz, respectively.