Hybrid Nd~(3+)-doped passively Q-switched waveguide laser made by ion exchange

摘要

In the mid 80's, the doping of optical fiber's core with rare earth atoms has been a major breakthrough in the field of optical telecommunications since it allowed the realization of in-line optical amplifiers. However, erbium-doped fiber amplifiers are a few meters long and a huge effort has been made in order to realize compact and efficient active devices based on rare-earth-doped waveguides. For this purpose the use of phosphate glasses instead of silicate ones has been investigated because they allow a better solubility of the inserted rare earths. In this paper we present the realization of a hybrid Neodymium-doped passively Q-switched waveguide laser made by ion exchange on a Schott IOG-1 phosphate laser glass combined with the deposition of a BDN saturable absorber diluted in a cellulose acetate polymer cladding. In a first step, we present the CW operation of the laser with an undoped cladding. We show that for a 3.5-μm wide, 1.4-cm long waveguide realized by a silver-sodium ion exchange, a 6 mW output has been achieved by creating a Fabry-Perot cavity with dielectric multilayers mirrors sticked to the chip facets. Then, the characterizations performed on the BDN doped layers are presented. It is shown that a proper selection of the hybrid guiding structure and saturable absorber concentration entail an excess absorption ranging from 1 to 10 dB/cm at zero flux. Finally, results on Q-switched behavior are presented. Optical pulse duration of 2-ns (FWHM) was obtained with repetition rates ranging from 5 to around 50 kHz for a 22 W pulse peak power.