Threshold decrease and output-power improvement in dual-loss Q-switched laser based on few-layer WTe₂ saturable absorber

摘要： A dual-loss Q-switched laser was realized by applying a home-made 2.5 nm-thick WTe2 to an acoustic-optic (AO) modulated laser. Besides conventional pulse compression, the participation of WTe2 could obviously improve the average output power by 29.6% and reduce the laser threshold by 20%, even with the introduced 8% nonsaturable loss. The average-output-power improvement and pulse compression in this dual-loss modulated laser resulted in a 113.7% increase of peak power. According to the measured spectra of laser and photoluminescence of WTe2, the laser-induced excitonic light-emission may be the reason of this laser gain.