Active Q-switching in an erbium-doped fiber laser using an ultrafast silicon-based variable optical attenuator

Presented herein is the use of an ultrafast Si-based variable optical attenuator (VOA) as a Q-switch for rare earth-doped fiber lasers. The ultrafast VOA is based on a forward-biased p-i-n diode integrated with a ridge waveguide, which was originally designed and optimized for WDM channel power equalization in optical communication systems. By incorporating a Si-based VOA with a transient time of ∼410 ns into an erbium-doped fiber-based Fabry-Perot cavity it has been shown that stable Q-switched pulses possessing a temporal width of less than ∼86 ns can be readily obtained at a repetition rate of up to ∼1 MHz. The laser's peak power of ∼38 W is shown to be obtainable at 20 kHz with a slope efficiency of ∼21%.