Electron–phonon coupling in topological insulator Bi_2Se_3 thin films with different substrates

Broadband transient reflectivity traces were measured for Bi_2 Se_3 thin films with various substrates via a 400 nm pump–white-light-probe setup. We have verified the existence of a second Dirac surface state in Bi_2 Se_3 and qualitatively located it by properly analyzing the traces acquired at different probe wavelengths. Referring to the band structure of Bi_2 Se_3, the relaxation mechanisms for photo-excited electrons with different energies are also revealed and studied. Our results show a second rise of the transient reflection signal at the time scale of several picoseconds. The types of substrate can also significantly affect the dynamics of the rising signal. This phenomenon is attributed to the effect of lattice heating and coherent phonon processes. The mechanism study in this work will benefit the fabrication of high-performance photonic devices based on topological insulators.     

Soliton mode-locked fiber laser with high-quality MBE-grown Bi_2Se_3 film

In this work, a soliton mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser(EDFL) with a high-quality molecular beam epitaxy(MBE)-grown topological insulator(TI) Bi_2Se_3 saturable absorber(SA) is reported. To fabricate the SA device, a 16-layer Bi_2Se_3 film was grown successfully on a 100 μm thick SiO_2 substrate and sandwiched directly between two fiber ferrules. The TI-SA had a saturable absorption of 1.12% and a saturable influence of 160 MW/cm~2.After inserting the TI-SA into the unidirectional ring-cavity EDFL, self-starting mode-locked soliton pulse trains were obtained at a fundamental repetition rate of 19.352 MHz. The output central wavelength, pulse energy,pulse duration, and signal to noise ratio of the radio frequency spectrum were 1530 nm,18.5 p J, 1.08 ps, and 60d Bm, respectively. These results demonstrate that the MBE technique could provide a controllable and repeatable method for the fabrication of identical high-quality TI-SAs, which is critically important for ultra-fast pulse generation.