C-band tunable Q-switched fiber laser based on Alq3 as a saturable absorber

Abstract We propose a Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) with a wide-tuning wavelength range by using Alq3 as a saturable absorber (SA). A tunable bandpass filter (TBF) was integrated into the cavity to produce a tunable wavelength. The wavelength was shifted continuously with ease from 1520 nm to 1563.3 nm covering almost all C-band region. The fiber laser showed a very stable performance in which the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of around 53 dB was recorded at different wavelengths. To the best of our knowledge, this work demonstrates for the first time that Alq3 has the potential to be used as an effective SA for broadband tunable Q-switched fiber lasers.