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Laser Physics Letters

Controlled optical bistability switching in a diode-pumped Tm,Ho:LLF laser

X L Zhang, Long Yu, S Zhang, L Li, J Q Zhao, J H Cui, Guang-Zong Dong, Runtian Wang

Published Oct 22, 2013• 12 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report on the experimental demonstration of stable all-optical switching between two steady state values of optical bistability from a laser diode end-pumped quasi-three-level Tm,Ho:LLF laser in the 2 μm spectral region. The width of the hysteresis cycle and jump power values can be efficiently controlled by changing the length of the cavity, which is very important to adjust and optimize the optical switching process. The all-optical bistable switching effect is realized by only adding short positive and negative trigger pulses to the pump light. This is, to our knowledge, the first observation of all-optical bistable switching in a rare earth doped solid state laser.

DOI
10.1088/1612-2011/10/12/125801

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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•Nov 29, 2007•1 citation
We report on the experimental demonstration of stable all-optical switching between two steady state values of optical bistability from a laser diode end-pumped quasi-three-level Tm,Ho:LLF laser in the 2 μm spectral region. The width of the hysteresis cycle and jump power values can be efficiently controlled by changing the length of the cavity, which is very important to adjust and optimize the optical switching process. The all-optical bistable switching effect is realized by only adding short positive and negative trigger pulses to the pump light. This is, to our knowledge, the first observation of all-optical bistable switching in a rare earth doped solid state laser.
We experimentally demonstrate strong optical bistability in a 2 μm continuous wave Tm,Ho:YLF laser with a bulk crystal. The laser is end-pumped by a 792 nm fiber-coupled laser diode. The bistable region is as wide as 1.6 W and the jump power at the turning point is as high as 82.5 mW when the temperature of the laser crystal is kept at 253 K. The influences of the cavity length and the transmission of the output coupler on the characteristics of optical bistability are obtained. The theoretical analysis shows that the bistable output in the Tm,Ho:YLF lasers comes from the combined effects of the nonlinear saturation of ground state reabsorption, the energy transfer upconversion, and the excited state absorption.
We first investigate the polarization coexistence and switching between the orthogonal π- and σ-polarization states in a free running optical bistability Tm,Ho:LLF laser. The output performances of the optical bistability Tm,Ho:LLF laser is numerically simulated, based on a new rate equation theory model taking into account the influences of polarization-dependent gain and losses. The simulation results show the polarization coexistence and switching of output laser in the process of decreasing pump power. The physical mechanism of polarization coexistence and switching is clarified by analyzing the polarization-dependent net-gain coefficients. Furthermore, the polarization coexistence and switching are experimentally realized in the optical bistability Tm,Ho:LLF laser, which validates the theoretical analysis. The theoretical model can be applied to analyze the polarization coexistence and switching in other kinds of (quasi-) three-level optical bistable lasers.
We demonstrate strong optical bistability in a 2 microm continuous-wave Tm,Ho:YLF laser pumped by a 792 nm laser diode near room temperature. The bistable region is as much as 100 mW wide at 283 K and can be controlled by the temperature of the laser crystal. The influence of crystal temperature on the characteristics of optical bistability is obtained. The influence of the pump-to-mode ratio on the bistable characteristics of the laser is also discussed. To our knowledge this is the first report of optical bistability effects in Tm,Ho:YLF lasers.
Intrinsic optical bistability is of great interest and has potential applications in all-optical communication. In the present work, we have extended occurrences of bistable chromatic switching to a new rare-earth-doped system, namely single Tm-doped laser crystal pumped at 648 nm avalanche wavelength. Intrinsic bistability and chromatic switching of fluorescence emission are theoretically predicted, based on the rate equation theory. By using a four-order Runge-Kutta technique, chromatic switching spectra and bistable hysteresis loop are studied numerically in detail. The numerical results show that intrinsic chromatic switching of visible-infrared spectra is achievable experimentally corresponding to the transitions of Tm 1D2→3H6 (357 nm), 1G4→3H6 (469 nm), 3H4→3H6 (787 nm), 3F4→3H6 (1716 nm), as pump power increases far beyond avalanche threshold from low power level. Furthermore, we have found that the chromatic switching appears bistable in the emission spectra for pump intensity in the vicinity of avalanche threshold. The bistable hysteresis loops of luminescence are also demonstrated numerically for the dominant emission band. Intrinsic bistable chromatic switching in Tm-doped crystal is mediated by resonant excited-state absorption up-conversion.