Harmonic Mode-Locked Er-Doped Fiber Laser Based on a Microfiber-Based PbS Nanoparticle Saturable Absorber

Lead sulfide (PbS) is a nanomaterial with excellent optical and chemical properties, such as a narrow bandgap (0.37 eV), high thermal damage threshold, and high stability. Obviously, it is appropriate as a saturable absorber (SA) device for ultrafast photonics. However, PbS nanoparticles (NPs) as the SA of ultrashort harmonic mode-locked pulse still haven't been demonstrated at present. In this paper, the PbS NPs are made into an SA-device-based microfiber by optical deposition method and connected in an integrated Erbium-doped fiber laser. And both characteristics and nonlinear optical properties of PbS NPs have been systemically investigated. A fundamental frequency mode-locked pulsed laser is proposed, whose central wavelength is 1560 nm, and the pulse width is 1 ps. In addition, high repetition rate operations are achieved, with a maximum repetition rate of 833 MHz. This is the first time that PbS NPs are used to generate 96th-order harmonic mode-locking, and the corresponding pulse duration is 987 fs. It is demonstrated that PbS NPs are a kind of SA photonic material with excellent performance. It can improve the communication capacity by applying fiber communication, and it has potential application value even in material processing and optical comb.