A Q-switched, mode-locked fiber laser using a graphene oxide-based polarization sensitive saturable absorber

We demonstrate the use of a graphene oxide (GO)-deposited D-shaped fiber as a polarization sensitive saturable absorber for the implementation of a stable Q-switched, mode-locked fiber laser. Using both features of nonlinear saturable absorption and large polarization dependence loss of GO-deposited D-shaped fiber, stable Q-switched mode-locked pulses are readily obtained from an erbium-doped fiber ring laser through simple intra-cavity polarization control under a fixed pump power. It is shown that bursts of sub-picosecond, mode-locked pulses with a Q-switching envelope of a ~2.63 μs temporal width and a ~71.3 kHz repetition rate can readily be generated from the laser. It is also demonstrated that the operating regime of the pulsed laser can be readily changed between mode-locking, Q-switched mode-locking, and Q-switching simply by changing the polarization state of the oscillated beam within the cavity.

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