Carboxyl graphene oxide solution saturable absorber for femtosecond mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser**Project supported by the Central University Special Fund Basic Research and Operating Expenses, China (Grant No. GK201702005), the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province, China (Grant No. 2017JM6091), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61705183), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (Grant

Abstract

The carboxyl-functionalized graphene oxide (GO-COOH) is a kind of unique two-dimensional (2D) material and possesses excellent nonlinear saturable absorption property and high water-solubility. In this paper, we prepare saturable absorber (SA) device by depositing GO-COOH nanosheets aqueous solution on a D-shaped fiber. The modulation depth (MD) and saturable intensity of the SA are measured to be 9.6% and 19 MW/cm2, respectively. By inserting the SA into the erbium-doped fiber (EDF) laser, a passively mode-locked EDF laser has been achieved with the spectrum center wavelength of 1562.76 nm. The pulse duration, repetition rate, and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are 500 fs, 14.79 MHz, and 80 dB, respectively. The maximum average output power is measured to be 3.85 mW. These results indicate that the GO-COOH nanosheets SA can be used as a promising mode locker for the generation of ultrashort pulses.