Passively Q-switched dual-wavelength Yb:LSO laser based on tungsten disulphide saturable absorber

We demonstrate a passively Q-switched Yb:LSO laser based on tungsten disulphide (WS2) saturable absorber operating at 1034 nm and 1056 nm simultaneously. The saturable absorbers were fabricated by spin coating method. With low speed, the WS2 nanoplatelets embedded in polyvinyl alcohol could be coated on a BK7 glass substrate coated with high-refractive-index thin polymer. The shortest pulse width of 1.6 mu s with a repetition rate of 76.9 kHz is obtained. As the pump power increases to 9 W, the maximum output power is measured to be 250 mW, corresponding to a single pulse energy of 3.25 mu J. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to obtain dual-wavelength Q-switched solid-state laser using few-layer WS2 nanoplatelets.