Carbon natnotubes and graphene saturable absorber for ultrafast laser mode locking

A passive mode-locking scheme in fiber laser using single wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) or graphene as saturable absorber (SA) were demonstrated. Stable soliton-like pulses with pulsewidth of 418 fs and spectral linewidth of 6 nm using SWCNT and pulsewidth of 648 fs and spectral linewidth 3.88 nm using graphene as SA were achieved in mode-lock Er-doped fiber ring laser.