Widely-tunable, fully-monolithic, mid-infrared (mid-IR) deference frequency generation source (DFG) is presented. By using a custom designed fiber-pigtailed periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) crystal module the idler beam was generated with an efficiency of 21%/W, yielding 2.6 mW of optical output power. The proposed all-fiber configuration radically simplified the optical frequency conversion setup, making it robust and easily configurable. The usefulness of the constructed source was verified by performing simultaneous wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) laser trace gas detection of methane, near 2999 cm⁻¹, and ethane, near 2997 cm⁻¹, via two independently generated, tunable idler beams.

The paper deals with spectral and lasing characteristics of thulium-doped optical fibers fabricated by means of two doping techniques,
i.e. via a conventional solution-doping method and via a nanoparticle-doping method. The difference in fabrication was the application of a suspension of aluminum oxide nanoparticles of defined size instead of a conventional chloride-containing solution. Samples of thulium-doped silica fibers having nearly identical chemical composition and waveguiding properties were fabricated. The sample fabricated by means of the nanoparticle-doping method exhibited longer lifetime, reflecting other observations and the trend already observed with the fibers doped with erbium and aluminum nanoparticles. The fiber fabricated by means of the nanoparticle-doping method exhibited a lower lasing threshold (by ~20%) and higher slope efficiency (by ~5% rel.). All these observed differences are not extensive and deserve more in-depth research; they may imply a positive influence of the nanoparticle approach on properties of rare-earth-doped fibers for fiber lasers.

We demonstrated a tunable Q-switched ytterbium-doped fiber laser (YDFL) using MoWS₂/rGO nanocomposite as passive saturable absorber. Further, the Mo_1−xWxS₂/rGO nanosheets, with x proportion of 0.2, are synthesized using hydrothermal exfoliation technique. The proposed nanocomposite-PVA based thin film is fabricated by mixing the MoWS₂/rGO nanosheets with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). The fabricated thin film is sandwiched between two fiber ferrules to realize the proposed saturable absorber (SA). Further, the proposed MoWS₂/rGO-PVA based thin film SA exhibits a fast relaxation time and a high damage threshold which are suitable to realize a Q-switched pulsed laser with a tunable wavelength range of 10  nm that extends from 1028 nm to 1038 nm. For the highest pump power of 267.4 mW, the generated Q-switched pulses exhibit a narrow pulse width of 1.22 μs, the pulse repetition rate of 90.4 kHz, the highest pulse energy of 2.13  nJ and its corresponding average power of 0.193 mW. To the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first realization of a tunable Q-switching fiber laser in a 1 μm wavelength using MoWS2/rGO nanocomposite saturable absorber.

Self-swept erbium fiber laser emitting around 1.56 μm is reported in detail. Both sweep directions were registered: pointing toward longer and shorter wavelengths, redshift and blueshift sweeping, respectively. We describe method of determining the direction of the wavelength drift using the monochromator based optical spectrum analyzer. Possible root for this sweeping regime, i.e., the gain modulation along active fiber, is discussed with the help of a simple model calculating the overall cavity gain that can predict the direction of the laser wavelength sweeping.

A simple and robust method to generate a dual-wavelength mode-locked laser using a tunable Mach-Zehnder filter (TMZF) and a single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) based saturable absorber (SA) is proposed and demonstrated. The proposed laser uses a thulium-doped fiber for lasing in the two-micron region and exploits the interferometric spectrum of the TMZF to produce dual peaks with nearly equal magnitude. SWCNT based SA enables mode-locking at a threshold value of 150.4 mW with distinct dual-wavelength peaks at 1919.2 nm and 1963.7 nm. The peaks have a calculated pulse width of 1.8 ps and 1.6 ps, respectively with a repetition rate of 9.1 MHz with a relatively high optical-signal-to-noise ratio value of 59.1 dB. The output is also observed to remain unchanged over time, indicating high stability. The proposed laser has a promising application, particularly in ultrafast gas molecular spectroscopy and sensing.