An L-band graphene-oxide mode-locked fiber laser delivering bright and dark pulses

In this work we have demonstrated the generation of L-band bright and dark pulses from a graphene-oxide (GO) mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser. The polymer-hosted graphene-oxide saturable absorber (SA) was fabricated by a vertical evaporation method, which permitted a flexible choice of GO concentration and SA thickness. Stable fundamental solitons with a width of ~770 fs and repetition rate of ~21.79 MHz could be directly generated from the laser cavity. The corresponding spectrum was centered at ~ 1596.0 nm with a 3 dB bandwidth of ~4.454 nm. Triple solitons and fundamentally repetitive dark pulses could also be achieved. By changing the laser cavity design, we also achieved the generation of dark pulses, which had one to three times the repetition rate. The multiple soliton and dark pulse generation were experimentally observed for the first time in such a GO mode-locked fiber laser system, to the best of our knowledge. Our experimental results indicate that the GOSA can be successfully utilized to realize different mode-locked states in the L-band.