Graphene-clad Microfibre Saturable Absorber for Ultrafast Fibre Lasers

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2016 May 17

PMID 27181419

Citations 13

Authors

X M Liu

H R Yang

Y D Cui

G W Chen

Y Yang

X Q Wu

X K Yao

D D Han

X X Han

C Zeng

J Guo

W L Li

G Cheng

L M Tong

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Graphene, whose absorbance is approximately independent of wavelength, allows broadband light-matter interactions with ultrafast responses. The interband optical absorption of graphene can be saturated readily under strong excitation, thereby enabling scientists to exploit the photonic properties of graphene to realize ultrafast lasers. The evanescent field interaction scheme of the propagating light with graphene covered on a D-shaped fibre or microfibre has been employed extensively because of the nonblocking configuration. Obviously, most of the fibre surface is unused in these techniques. Here, we exploit a graphene-clad microfibre (GCM) saturable absorber in a mode-locked fibre laser for the generation of ultrafast pulses. The proposed all-surface technique can guarantee a higher efficiency of light-graphene interactions than the aforementioned techniques. Our GCM-based saturable absorber can generate ultrafast optical pulses within 1.5 μm. This saturable absorber is compatible with current fibre lasers and has many merits such as low saturation intensities, ultrafast recovery times, and wide wavelength ranges. The proposed saturable absorber will pave the way for graphene-based wideband photonics.

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