Saturable absorbers incorporating carbon nanotubes directly synthesized onto substrates and fibers and their application to mode-locked fiber lasers.

We present novel carbon-nanotube-based saturable absorbers. Using the low-temperature alcohol catalytic chemical-vapor deposition method, high-quality single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) were directly synthesized on quartz substrates and fiber ends. We successfully applied the SWNTs to mode lock a fiber laser producing subpicosecond pulses at a 50-MHz repetition rate.

[1]  Yuichi Tanaka,et al.  A noise suppressing saturable absorber at 1550 nm based on carbon nanotube technology , 2003, OFC 2003 Optical Fiber Communications Conference, 2003..

[2]  M. Fermann.  Ultrashort-pulse sources based on single-mode rare-earth-doped fibers , 1994 .

[3]  Masamichi Kohno,et al.  Low-temperature synthesis of high-purity single-walled carbon nanotubes from alcohol , 2002 .

[4]  M. Jablonski,et al.  Laser mode locking using a saturable absorber incorporating carbon nanotubes , 2004, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[5]  A dual-regime mode-locked/Q-switched laser using a saturable absorber incorporating carbon nanotubes (SAINT) , 2003, Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, 2003. CLEO '03..

[6]  T. Ebbesen.  Physical Properties of Carbon Nanotubes , 1997 .

[7]  Shigeo Maruyama,et al.  Direct synthesis of high-quality single-walled carbon nanotubes on silicon and quartz substrates , 2003 .

[8]  T. Okada,et al.  Novel Er and Ce codoped fluoride fiber amplifier for low-noise and high-efficient operation with 980-nm pumping , 2003, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[9]  N. Doran,et al.  Nonlinear-optical loop mirror. , 1988, Optics letters.

[10]  Y. Sakakibara,et al.  Mode-locked fiber lasers based on a saturable absorber incorporating carbon nanotubes , 2003, OFC 2003 Optical Fiber Communications Conference, 2003..

[11]  Minquan Tian,et al.  Semiconductor Carbon Nanotubes as Ultrafast Switching Materials for Optical Telecommunications , 2003 .

[12]  S. Maruyama,et al.  Characterization of single-walled carbon nanotubes catalytically synthesized from alcohol , 2003 .

[13]  Young Hee Lee,et al.  Crystalline Ropes of Metallic Carbon Nanotubes , 1996, Science.

[14]  T. Newson,et al.  Selfstarting passively mode-locked fibre ring soliton laser exploiting nonlinear polarisation rotation , 1992 .

[15]  D. Miller,et al.  Solid-state low-loss intracavity saturable absorber for Nd:YLF lasers: an antiresonant semiconductor Fabry-Perot saturable absorber. , 1992, Optics letters.