All-polarization maintaining femtosecond Er-doped fiber laser mode-locked by graphene saturable absorber

All-polarization maintaining, graphene-based passively mode-locked erbium doped fiber laser is presented. The laser consists of fully polarization maintaining (PM) fibers and components, providing linear output polarization state with degree of polarization (DOP) at the level of 93.5%. The saturable absorber was formed by mechanical exfoliation of graphene flakes from pure graphite and deposited on a fiber connector. Soliton pulses at 1555 nm were achieved with 45.88 MHz repetition rate with 590 fs duration. (C) 2012 by Astro, Ltd.