Thermal damage suppression of a black phosphorus saturable absorber for high-power operation of pulsed fiber lasers

Abstract

Recent studies of black phosphorus (BP) have shown its future potential in the field of photonics. We determined the optical damage threshold of BP at 21.8 dBm in a fiber ring laser cavity, and demonstrated the high-power operation capacity of an evanescent field interaction-based BP saturable absorber. The long-term stability of a passively mode-locked fiber laser with a saturable absorber operating at the optical power of 23.3 dBm was verified for 168 h without any significant performance degradation. The center wavelength, spectral width, and pulse width of the laser output are 1558.8 nm, 14.2 nm, and 805 fs, respectively.