Widely tunable eye-safe laser by a passively Q-switched photonic crystal fiber laser and an external-cavity optical parametric oscillator

• Published in: Laser physics letters 2011-09, Vol.8 (9), p.678-683
• Main Authors: Chang, H.L., Zhuang, W.Z., Huang, W.C., Huang, J.Y., Huang, K.F., Chen, Y.F.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Exact sciences and technology; eye-safe laser; Fiber optics; Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications); Laser optical systems: design and operation; Nonlinear optical crystals; Nonlinear optics; Optical materials; Optical parametric oscillators and amplifiers; Optics; photonic crystal fiber laser; Physics; Q-switching; tuning range
• ISSN: 1612-2011; 1612-202X
• DOI: 10.1002/lapl.201110050

We report on a widely tunable passively Q‐switched photonic crystal fiber (PCF) laser with wavelength tuning range up to 80 nm. The PCF laser utilizes an AlGaInAs quantum well/barrier structure as a saturable absorber and incorporates an external‐cavity optical parametric oscillator (OPO) to achieve wavelength conversion. Under a pump power of 13.1 W at 976 nm, the PCF laser generated 1029‐nm radiation with maximum output energy of 750 μJ and was incident into an external‐cavity OPO. The output energy and peak power of signal wave was found to be 138 μJ and 19 kW, respectively. By tuning the temperature of nonlinear crystal, periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN), in the OPO, the signal wavelength in eye‐safe regime from 1513 to 1593 nm was obtained. (© 2011 by Astro Ltd., Published exclusively by WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA) (© 2011 by Astro Ltd., Published exclusively by WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA)