Graphene mode-locked femtosecond Alexandrite laser

We report for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, graphene mode-locked operation of a femtosecond Alexandrite laser at 750 nm. A multipass-cavity configuration was employed to scale the output energy and to eliminate spectral/Q-switching instabilities. By using a monolayer graphene saturable absorber, mode locking could be obtained. With 5W of pinup at 532 nm, nearly transform-limited, 65 fs pulses with a time-bandwidth product of 0.319 were generated. The mode-locked laser operated at a pulse repetition rate of 5.56 MHz and produced 8 mW output power, corresponding to a pulse energy and peak power of 1.4 nJ and 22 kW, respectively. These experiments further show that graphene can be used to initiate mode locking at wavelengths as low as 750 nm. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America