Broadly Tunable Plasmons in Doped Oxide Nanoparticles for Ultrafast and Broadband Mid-Infrared All-Optical Switching

摘要： Plasmons in conducting nanostructures offer the means to efficiently manipulate light at the nanoscale with subpicosecond speed in an all-optical operation fashion, thus allowing for constructing high performance all-optical signal-processing devices. Here, by exploiting the ultrafast nonlinear optical properties of broadly tunable mid-infrared (MIR) plasmons in solution-processed, degenerately doped oxide nanoparticles, we demonstrate ultrafast all-optical switching in the MIR region, which features with subpicosecond response speed (with recovery time constant of ?400 fs) as well as ultrabroadband response spectral range (covering 3.0-5.0 μm). Furthermore, with the degenerately doped nanoparticles as Q-switch, pulsed fiber lasers covering 2.0-3.5 μm were constructed, of which a watt-level fiber laser at 3.0 μm band show superior overall performance among ever-reported passively Q-switched fiber lasers at the same band. Notably, the degenerately doped nanoparticles show great potential to work in the spectral range over 3.0 μm that is beyond the accessibility of commercially available but expensive semiconducting saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). Our work demonstrates a versatile while cost-effective material solution to ultrafast photonics in the technologically important MIR region.