Lithium Niobate Crystal with Embedded Au Nanoparticles: A New Saturable Absorber for Efficient Mode‐Locking of Ultrafast Laser Pulses at 1 µm

Abstract Plasmonic Au nanoparticles embedded in LiNbO₃ crystals as efficient saturable absorbers to realize 74.1 ps mode‐locked laser pulse generation at 1 µm are reported. The system is fabricated by Au ion implantation and subsequent annealing, a well‐developed chip technology. The strong optical absorption band peaking at 640 nm is observed due to the localized surface plasmon resonance. Z‐scan investigation shows that the LiNbO₃ crystals with embedded Au nanoparticles possess ultrafast saturable absorption properties at near‐infrared 1 µm wavelength. With this feature the Au nanoparticles embedded LiNbO₃ wafer is applied as saturable absorber into a laser‐written Nd:YVO₄ waveguide platform. Stable laser pulses at 1064 nm based on an efficient passive Q‐switched mode‐locking process, reaching a fundamental repetition rate of 6.4 GHz and a pulse duration of 74.1 ps, are obtained. Since LiNbO₃ has broadband applications in various optical systems, this work opens the way to develop intriguing devices in LiNbO₃‐based photonic circuits by using embedded metallic nanoparticles.