A passively $Q$-switched fiber laser near 2 μm is achieved with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as a saturable absorber. Stable $Q$-switched pulses are generated from an extremely compact setup with a central wavelength of 1958.2 nm. Under the bidirectional pump configuration, the repetition rate of the fiber laser can be widely tuned from 20 to 80 kHz by increasing the pump power at the same time the pulse width decreases from 1 μs to 490 ns. When the incident pump power is 1.3 W, the average output power, the pulse repetition rate, the pulse width, and the highest single pulse energy are 91 mW, 80 kHz, 490 ns, and 1.14 μJ, respectively. To further optimize the system configuration, the pulse width can be reduced to 362 ns when the cavity length is reduced.

© 2012 Optical Society of America

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