All-polarization-maintaining-fiber laser Q-switched by evanescent field interaction with Sb2Te3 saturable absorber.

We report on the generation of 152-nJ Q-switched pulses in all-polarization-maintaining Er-doped fiber laser. The laser is passively modulated by the antimony telluride (Sb₂Te₃) layer sputtered on a surface of the side-polished fiber in order to exploit the evanescent field interaction in optically nonlinear material. The laser cavity is designed in an extremely simple way comprising, in addition to fibers, only one component and the saturable absorber, forming a robust, compact, and stable source of short pulses. The repetition rate might be tuned from 42 kHz up to 132 kHz. The shortest recorded pulse duration was the 857 ns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]