With the increase of the laser powers and the decrease of the pulse durations, materials with very large optical nonlinearities are of great interest for the laser community. Indeed, depending on the type of the nonlinearities, they can be used for several applications including frequency conversion and self-focusing. In particular, saturable absorbers are widely studied, as they allow mode-locking of laser systems or super-resolved laser writing. In this work, we have studied the saturable absorption efficiency of Sb2Te3 thin layers. Layers with thicknesses ranging from 2.5 to 30 nm have been deposited using electron beam deposition (Bühler SYRUSpro 710). These films were then annealed in a temperature-controlled furnace at 250°C during 1h to ensure that the layers are completely crystallized. These layers were then thoroughly inspected with X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Backscattered electron detector (BSD) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). The nonlinear optical properties under nanosecond and femtosecond pulse duration were also studied for each layer using the Z-Scan technique. These studies allowed the determination of the nonlinear absorption and the nonlinear refraction of the samples under two different wavelengths at each pulse duration regime. In this paper we present a correlation between the structure of the Sb2Te3 thin films and the observed nonlinearities.
Lasers and amplifiers based on thulium-doped silica fibers require improved spectroscopic properties. In this context, one of the most promising approaches is based on the embedding of thulium ions in nanoparticles of tailored composition and structure. This paper presents various methods used to produce thulium-doped nanoparticles inside silica-based optical fibers. Effects of solution doping method during the elaboration of Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition preform and doping solution composition are studied. A comparison is made between the use of solutions containing LaF3:Tm3+ or YAG:Tm3+ nanoparticles and aluminum-lanthanum-thulium chlorides. Results show that for similar lanthanum content, lanthanum-thulium chlorides doping allows for similar enhancement of 3H4 level of Tm3+ than LaF3:Tm3+ doping. Also, effects of aluminum on 3H4 lifetime enhancement and inhibition of nanoparticle’s formation is discussed.
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