High-pulse-energy, passively Q-switched Yb-doped fiber laser with AlGaInAs quantum wells as a saturable absorber

Abstract

We demonstrate an efficient, high-pulse-energy, passively Q-switched Yb-doped fiber laser with AlGaInAs quantum wells (QWs) as a saturable absorber. The AlGaInAs QW material is designed to provide a large modulation change and a quite-low nonsaturable loss. At an incident pump power of 7.6 W, an average output power of 3.8 W, pulse energy of 300 mu J, pulse repetition rate of 12.5 kHz, and pulse duration of 30 ns was obtained. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America