130 mW average power, 4.6 nJ pulse energy, 10.2 ps pulse duration from an Er~(3+) fiber oscillator passively mode locked by a resonant saturable absorber mirror

摘要

An Er~(3+) fiber laser passively mode locked by a resonant saturable absorber mirror achieves more than 130 mW average power at 1560 nm from a Fabry-Perot cavity. The pulsed regime is self-starting from the CW regime without any Q-switch transition. The output pulse has a duration of 10.2 ps and can be extracavity dechirped with 42percent efficiency down to 614 fs, which represents 1.2 times the Fourier limit imposed by the spectrum. To date, this corresponds to the highest averaged power directly extracted at such a wavelength from a fiber laser mode locked with a saturable absorber mirror.