Black phosphorus-based saturable absorber for Q-switched Tm:YAG ceramic laser

We have experimentally demonstrated a passively Q-switched Tm-doped YAG ceramic laser with black phosphorus (BP) as saturable absorber (SA). According to the measurement, the BP saturable absorber mirror has a modulation depth of 5% and a saturation fluence of 20 μJ/cm2. The generated Q-switched pulse has a maximum average power of 38.5 mW and pulse energy of 3.32 μJ, with the corresponding repetition rate of 11.6 KHz and pulse width of 3.12 μs at 2 μm wavelength. The results show that BP is a promising SA for midinfrared-pulsed lasers.