High-damage-resistant tungsten disulfide saturable absorber mirror for passively Q-switched fiber laser

In this paper, we demonstrate a high-damage-resistant tungsten disulfide saturable absorber mirror (WS2-SAM) fabricated by magnetron sputtering technique. The WS2-SAM has an all-fiber-integrated configuration and high-damage-resistant merit because the WS2 layer is protected by gold film so as to avoid being oxidized and destroyed at high pump power. Employing the WS2-SAM in an Erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) with linear cavity, the stable Q-switching operation is achieved at central wavelength of 1560 nm, with the repetition rates ranging from 29.5 kHz to 367.8 kHz and the pulse duration ranging from 1.269 mu s to 154.9 ns. For the condition of the maximum pump power of 600 mW, the WS2-SAM still works stably with an output power of 25.2 mW, pulse energy of 68.5 nJ, and signal-noise-ratio of 42 dB. The proposed WS2-SAM configuration provides a promising solution for advanced pulsed fiber lasers with the characteristics of high damage resistance, high output energy, and wide tunable frequency. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America