Graphene mode-locked femtosecond Cr:ZnSe laser at 2500 nm

Abstract

We report, for the first time to our knowledge, femtosecond pulse generation from a graphene mode-locked Cr:ZnSe laser at 2500 nm. To minimize the insertion losses at the lasing wavelength, high-quality monolayer graphene transferred on a CaF2 substrate was used in the experiments. Once mode-locking was initiated, the laser generated a stable train of 226 fs pulses with a time-bandwidth product of 0.39. The mode-locked laser operated at a pulse repetition rate of 77 MHz and produced 80 mW output power with an incident pump power of 1.6 W. To our knowledge, this is the longest laser wavelength at which graphene-based passive mode-locking has been demonstrated to date. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America