Erbium-doped fiber laser passively Q-switched by an InGaAs/InP multiple quantum well saturable absorber

We report on the behavior of an erbium-doped fiber laser passively Q-switched by an InGaAs/InP multiple quantum well semiconductor saturable absorber. The fiber is moderately doped in erbium ions. The saturable absorber consists of 40 periods of InGaAs (8.5 nm)/InP (10 nm) grown on an InP substrate. The laser efficiency is nonlinear under Q-switch regime and unusual temporal pulse shapes with rising times lower than decay times are observed around threshold. Pulse duration is around the microsecond range. Simple arguments based on a rate-equations approach are proposed in order to explain our results. They are justified a posteriori via numerical integration of the equations. The variation of threshold level versus spectroscopic parameters has been determined and that makes a guideline for generalizing our discussion.