Ultrashort pulse generation using tantalum aluminum carbide as a pulse modulator

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2025

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of tantalum aluminum carbide (Ta2AlC) as a passive pulse modulator for generating ultrafast mode-locked pulses in an erbium-doped fiber (EDF) laser cavity. The Ta2AlC modulator was prepared via an embedding method using polyvinyl alcohol as the host matrix, exhibiting a saturable absorption of 6.9% with a saturable intensity of 100 MW/cm2. When integrated into a long EDF laser cavity, the modulator enabled the generation of a picosecond soliton pulse train. Operating within a pump range of 95.2 to 210.62 mW, the self-starting mode-locked EDF laser achieved a central wavelength of 1561.7 nm, a repetition rate of 1.866 MHz, and a pulse width of 3.80 ps. These findings demonstrate that Ta2AlC is an effective passive modulator for ultrafast laser generation through mode locking. (c) 2025 Optica Publishing Group. All rights, including for text and data mining (TDM), Artificial Intelligence (AI) training, and similar technologies, are reserved.

Keywords

Erbium doped fiber amplifiers, Light modulators, Mode-locked fiber lasers, Optical pumping, Passive mode locking, Picosecond lasers, Pulse code modulation, Pulse width modulation, Saturable absorbers, Tantalum carbide, Ultrashort pulses

Publication Title

Applied Optics

DOI

10.1364/AO.545745

Volume

64

Issue

2

First Page

436

Last Page

442

Publisher

Optical Society of America

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