Single-walled carbon nanotubes for high-energy optical pulse formation

We passively generate picosecond 6.5 nJ optical pulses directly from a single-stage oscillator using carbon nanotube mode locker. The mode locker immunized to the high optical power induced damage employs the evanescent field interaction of propagating light with the nanotubes. The mode locker endures the intracavity power of up to 27.7 dBm. For the enhanced interaction, vertically aligned nanotubes are synthesized and applied. The output pulses are monitored for 200 h to find that there is no significant degradation of average power and spectral width.