Mode-locking of Er-doped fiber laser using a multilayer MoS2 thin film as a saturable absorber in both anomalous and normal dispersion regimes

Application of a multilayer Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2) thin film as a saturable absorber was experimentally demonstrated by realizing a stable and robust passive mode-locked fiber laser via the evanescent field interaction between the light and the film. The MoS2 film was grown by chemical vapor deposition, and was then transferred to a side polished fiber by a lift-off method. Intensity-dependent optical transmission through the MoS2 thin film on side polished fiber was experimentally observed showing efficient saturable absorption characteristics. Using erbium doped fiber as an optical gain medium, we built an all-fiber ring cavity, where the MoS2 film on the side polished fiber was inserted as a saturable absorber. Stable dissipative soliton pulse trains were successfully generated in the normal dispersion regime with a spectral bandwidth of 23.2 nm and the pulse width of 4.98 ps. By adjusting the total dispersion in the cavity, we also obtained soliton pulses with a width of 637 fs in the anomalous dispersion regime near the lasing wavelength lambda = 1.55 mu m. Detailed and systematic experimental comparisons were made for stable mode locking of an all-fiber laser cavity in both the normal and anomalous regimes. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America