Soliton mode-locked Er-doped fiber laser by using Alq3 saturable absorber

Abstract This paper demonstrated a mode-locked fiber laser based on Alq3 as passive saturable absorber (SA) in a simple all-fiber Erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) cavity. By incorporating Alq3 into the fiber laser cavity, a stable mode-locked pulsing was achieved. The laser pulses have a pulse width of 1.6 ps with a soliton spectrum centered at 1561.5 nm. The pulses train exhibits a very stable output with a high signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 41.5 dB. The results suggest that Alq3 is a promising nonlinear optical material, which could be as an ultra-fast mode-locker. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of Alq3 as a mode-locker in an EDFL setup.