Pulse shortening mode-locked fiber laser by thickness and concentration product of carbon nanotube based saturable absorber

The dependence of thickness and concentration product (TCP) of single-wall carbon nanotubes saturable absorber (SWCNTs SA) on stabilizing and shortening pulsewidth in mode-locked fiber lasers (MLFLs) was investigated. We found that an optimized TCP for pulse energy and nonlinear self-phase modulation (SPM) enabled to determine the shorter pulsewidth and broader 3-dB spectral linewidth of the MLFLs. The shortest MLFL pulsewidth of 418 fs and broad spectral linewidth of 6 nm were obtained as the optimized TCP was 70.93 (mu m.wt%), which was in good agreement with the area theorem prediction. This significant effect of TCP on pulse energy, SPM, pulsewidth, and spectral linewidth of MLFLs suggests that the TCP represents the total amount of SWCNTs in SA, which can be used as one of important and key parameters for characterizing the passive MLFL pulsewidth. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America