The use of pulsed laser deposition technique for improving the stability of Er-doped Fiber lasers

The pulsed laser deposition (PLD) Technique has been used to fabricate saturable absorbers (SAs) for Er-doped fiber lasers (EDFL). Titanium aluminum carbide (Ti 3 AlC 2 ) thin films of different thicknesses were deposited using PLD and employed as SAs in the EDFL cavity. The stability of SAs fabricated by PLD was compared with those prepared using mesh powder, and a comprehensive method for stability measurement was proposed. These SAs modulated the intracavity loss and successfully demonstrated Q-switching operation. Various parameters of the Q-switched EDFL, including pulse width, output energy and repetition rate, were measured and compared. The results indicate that the stability of the EDFL is significantly better when using PLD-fabricated SAs compared to the conventional mesh powder approach. Furthermore, a more detailed methodology for evaluating EDFL stability has been presented.