Manganese dioxide as wide adaptive ultrafast photonic device for pulsed laser generation

Abstract Research on novel ultrafast photonic devices with wide adaptability has become important scientific technical means to realize both scheme innovation and performance breakthrough in fiber laser generation. As types of transition metal oxide, manganese dioxide (MnO 2 ) materials exhibit remarkable properties including high photothermal stability, strong oxidation resistance, and excellent optical properties, making them promising candidate for utilization as modulation devices in nonlinear optics and ultrafast optics fields. We investigate the impact of MnO 2 -based saturable absorber (SA) on the pulse characteristics. The experiment reveals that MnO 2 -based SA supports effectively pulsed laser generation in wide pump power range and large dispersion parameter space with signal-to-noise ratio more than 85 dB. As far as we know, the pump power response range is outstanding among the most of the reported pulsed lasers, which is attributed to the large modulation depth of MnO 2 SA. We also investigate the impact of dispersion on the characteristics of laser output, which is not involved in other similar works. This research indicates that MnO 2 as a photonic device has vast potential in advanced ultrafast optics.