Femtosecond solid-state laser based on tungsten disulfide saturable absorber

A new kind of WS2 film was designed, which was composed of few-layer WS2 nanosheets. The nanosheets spread evenly over the SiO2 substrate. By applying the samples into a solid-state laser cavity, excellent mode-locking (ML) performance was obtained. The pulse repetition rate was 86.7 MHz with a pulse width of 736 fs. The results indicate that WS2 material have prosperous application future in solid-state lasers. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America