The present invention discloses an electrically tunable saturable absorber device based on a gold nanometer thin film, a preparation method thereof, and an application thereof, belonging to the technical field of lasers. The electrically tunable saturable absorber device includes an
optical fiber substrate, a gold nanometer thin film, a
metal wire
electrode, and an adjustable DC power supply. The gold nanometer thin film is deposited on the
optical fiber substrate by
physical vapor deposition technology to form a saturable absorber device. The gold nanometer thin film is connected to the adjustable DC power supply through the
metal wire
electrode to form a loop. By applying a
voltage to the gold nanometer thin film through the DC power supply, the purpose of dynamically regulating the
linear loss and the nonlinear
saturable absorption property of the device is realized. When a
DC voltage is applied to the gold nanometer thin film, due to the
Joule heat effect, the temperature of the gold nanometer thin film increases with the increase of the
voltage, resulting in changes in the
electron-
phonon scattering probability and the
dielectric constant in the gold nanometer thin film, thereby modulating the
surface plasmon resonance absorption characteristics of the gold nanometer thin film, as well as the
linear loss and
saturable absorption property parameters of the device. When the electrically tunable saturable absorber is used as a modulation device in a mode-locked
fiber laser, by applying a
DC voltage to the electrically tunable saturable absorber, the working
wavelength and pulse width of the mode-locked
laser can be adjusted in real time, and the switching of the
laser working state can be realized.