‘Plug-and-play’ plasmonic metafibers for ultrafast fibre lasers

Metafibers expand the functionalities of conventional optical fibres to unprecedented nanoscale light manipulations by integrating metasurfaces on the fibre tips,becoming an emerging light-coupling platform for both the nanoscience and fibre optics communities.Current metafibers remain proof-of-concept demonstrations that mostly explore isolated bare fibres owing to the lack of standard interfaces with universal fibre networks.Here,we develop methodologies for fabricating well-defined plasmonic metasurfaces directly on the end facets of commercial single-mode fibre jumpers using standard planar technologies and provide the first demonstration of their practical applications in the nonlinear plasmonic regime.Featuring plug-and-play connections with fibre circuitry and arbitrary metasurface landscapes,the metafibers with tunable plasmonic resonances are implemented into fibre laser cavities,yielding all-fibre sub-picosecond(minimum 513 fs)soliton mode locked lasers at optical wavelengths of 1.5μm and 2μm,demonstrating their unusual polarimetric nonlinear transfer functions and superior saturation absorption responses.The nanofabrication process flow is compatible with existing cleanroom technologies,offering metafibers an avenue to become a regular member of functionalised fibre components.This work paves the way toward the next generation of ultrafast lasers,optical frequency combs,and ultracompact‘all-in-fibre’optical systems.

Generation of 100 nJ pulse,1 W average power at 2μm from an intermode beating mode-locked all-fiber laser

We report on the investigation of intermode beating mode-locked(IBML)pulse generation in a simple all-fiber Tm^3+-doped double clad fiber laser(TDFL).This IBML TDFL is implemented by matching longitudinal-mode frequency between 793 nm laser and TDFL without extra mode locker.The central wavelength of 1983 nm,the fundamental pulse frequency of 9.6 MHz and the signal-to-noise ratio(SNR)of>50 dB are achieved in this IBML TDFL.With laser cavity optimization,the IBML TDFL can finally generate an average output power of 1.03 W with corresponding pulse energy of 107 nJ.These results can provide an easily accessible way to develop compact large-energy,highpower TDFLs.