TY - JOUR

T1 - Double-wall carbon nanotube hybrid mode-locker in tm-doped fibre laser

T2 - A novel mechanism for robust bound-state solitons generation

AU - Chernysheva, Maria

AU - Bednyakova, Anastasia

AU - Al Araimi, Mohammed

AU - Howe, Richard C.T.

AU - Hu, Guohua

AU - Hasan, Tawfique

AU - Gambetta, Alessio

AU - Galzerano, Gianluca

AU - Rümmeli, Mark

AU - Rozhin, Aleksey

PY - 2017/3/13

Y1 - 2017/3/13

N2 - The complex nonlinear dynamics of mode-locked fibre lasers, including a broad variety of dissipative structures and self-organization effects, have drawn significant research interest. Around the 2 μm band, conventional saturable absorbers (SAs) possess small modulation depth and slow relaxation time and, therefore, are incapable of ensuring complex inter-pulse dynamics and bound-state soliton generation. We present observation of multi-soliton complex generation in mode-locked thulium (Tm)-doped fibre laser, using double-wall carbon nanotubes (DWNT-SA) and nonlinear polarisation evolution (NPE). The rigid structure of DWNTs ensures high modulation depth (64%), fast relaxation (1.25 ps) and high thermal damage threshold. This enables formation of 560-fs soliton pulses; two-soliton bound-state with 560 fs pulse duration and 1.37 ps separation; and singlet+doublet soliton structures with 1.8 ps duration and 6 ps separation. Numerical simulations based on the vectorial nonlinear Schrodinger equation demonstrate a transition from single-pulse to two-soliton bound-states generation. The results imply that DWNTs are an excellent SA for the formation of steady single- and multi-soliton structures around 2 μm region, which could not be supported by single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). The combination of the potential bandwidth resource around 2 μm with the soliton molecule concept for encoding two bits of data per clock period opens exciting opportunities for data-carrying capacity enhancement.

AB - The complex nonlinear dynamics of mode-locked fibre lasers, including a broad variety of dissipative structures and self-organization effects, have drawn significant research interest. Around the 2 μm band, conventional saturable absorbers (SAs) possess small modulation depth and slow relaxation time and, therefore, are incapable of ensuring complex inter-pulse dynamics and bound-state soliton generation. We present observation of multi-soliton complex generation in mode-locked thulium (Tm)-doped fibre laser, using double-wall carbon nanotubes (DWNT-SA) and nonlinear polarisation evolution (NPE). The rigid structure of DWNTs ensures high modulation depth (64%), fast relaxation (1.25 ps) and high thermal damage threshold. This enables formation of 560-fs soliton pulses; two-soliton bound-state with 560 fs pulse duration and 1.37 ps separation; and singlet+doublet soliton structures with 1.8 ps duration and 6 ps separation. Numerical simulations based on the vectorial nonlinear Schrodinger equation demonstrate a transition from single-pulse to two-soliton bound-states generation. The results imply that DWNTs are an excellent SA for the formation of steady single- and multi-soliton structures around 2 μm region, which could not be supported by single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). The combination of the potential bandwidth resource around 2 μm with the soliton molecule concept for encoding two bits of data per clock period opens exciting opportunities for data-carrying capacity enhancement.

KW - 2 MU-M

KW - DISSIPATIVE SOLITONS

KW - LOCKING

KW - NONLINEAR POLARIZATION EVOLUTION

KW - SATURABLE ABSORBER

KW - SINGLE-WALL

KW - SPECTROSCOPY

KW - TRANSMISSION

KW - ULTRAFAST PHOTONICS

KW - WIDE-BAND

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85015184709&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1038/srep44314

DO - 10.1038/srep44314

M3 - Article

C2 - 28287159

AN - SCOPUS:85015184709

VL - 7

SP - 44314

JO - Scientific Reports

JF - Scientific Reports

SN - 2045-2322

M1 - 44314

ER -