Soliton compression of the erbium-doped fiber laser weakly started mode-locking by nanoscale p-type Bi₂Te₃ topological insulator particles

We demonstrate the nanoscale p-type Bi2Te3 powder-based saturable absorber-induced passive mode-locking of the erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) with sub-picosecond pulsewidth. Such a nanoscale topological insulator powder is obtained by polishing the bulk p-type Bi2Te3 in a commercial thermoelectric cooler (TE cooler). This is then directly brushed onto the end-face of a single-mode fiber patchcord, to avoid any mis-connecting loss caused by laser beam divergence, which can result in a mode-locked pulsewidth of 436 fs in the self-amplitude modulation mode of a TE cooler. To further shorten the pulse, the soliton compression is operated by well-controlling the group delay dispersion and self-phase modulation, providing the passively mode-locked EDFL with a pulsewidth as short as 403 fs.