The role of saturable absorbers thickness in the Q-switching of the erbium-doped fiber laser

Abstract A passively Q-switched Erbium (Er 3+ ) doped fiber laser (EDFL) based on a ZnO saturable absorber (SA) prepared using a pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique is demonstrated. The in-situ monitoring of the thickness in the PLD system enabled the control of the SA’s thickness during the growth. The thickness of the SA was varied and the output characteristics of the fiber laser with all thicknesses are compared. This study reveals that the performance and efficiency of an EDFL including pulse repetition rates, pulse duration, pulse energy, peak power, stability, and signal-to-noise ratio can be improved by varying the thickness of the SA. Based on the thickness of the SA, the optimized results are also presented. These findings suggest that the thickness control of the SA film grown directly on the fiber ferrule facilitates much-improved EDFL that has potential applications in pulsed laser sources.