Actively manipulation of operation states in passively pulsed fiber lasers by using graphene saturable absorber on microfiber

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate an operation switchable Erbium-doped fiber laser by employing graphene saturable absorber (GSA) on microfiber. With the introducing of a polydimethylsiloxane layer, a graphene can be considered as a parallel plate on microfiber and induces different propagation losses to TE and TM modes. By the use of such polarization sensitive GSA on microfiber, Erbium doped fiber laser with switchable operation states such as continuous wave, stable Q-switching, Q-switched mode-locking, and continuous-wave mode-locking, can be achieved by simply tuning the polarization states in the laser cavity. Our results show that covering graphene on microfibers could be a promising method for fabricating all fiber SA, and may have high potential in wide applications.