Visible-wavelength pulsed lasers with low-dimensional saturable absorbers

Abstract

The recent renaissance in pulsed lasers operating in the visible spectral region has been driven by their significant applications in a wide range of fields such as display technology, medicine, microscopy, material processing, and scientific research. Low-dimensional nanomaterials as saturable absorbers are exploited to create strong nonlinear saturable absorption for pulse generation at visible wavelengths due to their absorption peaks located in visible spectral region. Here we provide a detailed overview of visible-wavelength pulsed lasers based on low-dimensional nanomaterials, covering the optical properties and various integration strategies of these nanomaterials saturable absorbers, and their performance from solid-state as well as fiber pulsed lasers in the visible spectral range. This emerging application domain will undoubtedly lead to the rapid development of visible pulsed lasers.

Keywords

• nanomaterials
• saturable absorbers
• visible laser
• pulsed laser