Tunable Gold Nanorods Q-Switcher for Pulsed Er-Doped Fiber Laser

We prepared the gold nanorods (GNRs) via seed-mediated growth method, and fabricated the fiber-compatible saturable absorption device with it. We found that the nonlinear absorption behavior of the fiber-compatible GNRs saturable absorber can be tuned by introducing an external modulation laser. With the modulating power varying from 0 to 100 mW, the modulation depth of the saturable absorber could be tuned from 22.85% to 17.91%. Based on the all-optical modulation method with GNRs, the pulse width and repetition rate tunable Q-switched pulses can be delivered from an erbium-doped fiber laser.