High-power thulium fiber laser Q switched with single-layer graphene

We report high-power 2 mu m Tm3+ fiber lasers passively Q switched by double-piece single-layer graphene transferred onto a glass plate. Through manipulating intracavity laser beam size and increasing pump ratios, an average power of 5.2 W is directly achieved from the laser oscillator with an optical-to-optical slope efficiency of 26%. The laser pulse energy can be as high as similar to 18 mu J, comparable to that from actively Q-switched fiber lasers. The narrowest pulse width is 320 ns, and the pulse repetition rate can be tuned from tens of kilohertz to 280 kHz by changing the pump power. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power and pulse energy, as well as the narrowest pulse width, from graphene-based Q-switched 2 mu m fiber lasers. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America