Carbon Nanotube Mode-Locked Fiber Laser Generating Cylindrical Vector Beams with a Two-Mode Fiber Bragg Grating

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a compact all-fiber laser generating cylindrical vector beam (CVB) using carbon nanotubes as the saturable absorber for mode-locking and a two-mode fiber Bragg grating (TM-FBG) as the mode discriminator. Both radially and azimuthally polarized beams with a polarization purity of 90% were obtained by simply adjusting the polarization controllers. The CVB mode-locked fiber laser operates at 1552.9 nm with a 3-dB line width of less than 0.02 nm, generating ns CVB pulses. The all-fiber CVB laser may have potential applications from fundamental research to practical applications, such as particle capture, high-resolution measurement and material processing.