We demonstrate an erbium-doped fiber laser passively mode-locked by a multilayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS(2)) saturable absorber (SA). The multilayer MoS(2) is prepared by the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method and transferred onto the end-face of a fiber connector. Taking advantage of the excellent saturable absorption of the fabricated MoS(2)-based SA, stable mode locking is obtained at a pump threshold of 31 mW. Resultant output soliton pulses have central wavelength, spectral width, pulse duration, and repetition rate of 1568.9 nm, 2.6 nm, 1.28 ps, and 8.288 MHz, respectively. The experimental results show that multilayer MoS(2) is a promising material for ultrafast laser systems.

A diode-cladding-pumped mid-infrared passively Q-switched Ho 3+-doped fluoride fiber laser using a reverse designed broad band semiconductor saturable mirror (SESAM) was demonstrated. Nonlinear reflectivity of the SESAM was measured using an in-house Yb 3+-doped mode-locked fiber laser at 1062 nm. Stable pulse train was produced at a slope efficient of 12.1% with respect to the launched pump power. Maximum pulse energy of 6.65 µJ with a pulse width of 1.68 µs and signal to noise ratio (SNR) of ~50 dB was achieved at a repetition rate of 47.6 kHz and center wavelength of 2.971 µm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first 3 μm region SESAM based Q-switched fiber laser with the highest average power and pulse energy, as well as the longest wavelength from mid-infrared passively Q-switched fluoride fiber lasers.

The stable multipulse emission from an erbium-doped mode-locked fiber laser in dissipative soliton resonance (DSR) regime is numerically and experimentally investigated. It shows that in the multipulse operation of DSR, all pulses have identical characteristics. The number of these pulses is determined by the initial conditions, and keeps constant with the growth of pump power. Experimental results match well with the theoretical simulations. In the experiment, we obtain as high as 86 dual-wavelength DSR pulses, which have the same characteristics and are equally spaced in the cavity. Since the pulses behave similarly to harmonic mode-locking (HML), we call this phenomenon HML under DSR. By properly adjusting the polarization controllers, other numbers of multipulse emission in DSR region can be observed, which confirms that the number of DSR pulses depends on the initial conditions.

Cascade transitions of rare earth ions involved in infrared host fiber provide the potential to generate dual or multiple wavelength lasing at mid-infrared region. In addition, the fast development of saturable absorber (SA) towards the long wavelengths motivates the realization of passively switched mid-infrared pulsed lasers. In this work, by combing the above two techniques, a new phenomenon of passively Q-switched ~3 μm and gain-switched ~2 μm pulses in a shared cavity was demonstrated with a Ho3+-doped fluoride fiber and a specifically designed semiconductor saturable absorber (SESAM) as the SA. The repetition rate of ~2 μm pulses can be tuned between half and same as that of ~3 μm pulses by changing the pump power. The proposed method here will add new capabilities and more flexibility for generating mid-infrared multiple wavelength pulses simultaneously that has important potential applications for laser surgery, material processing, laser radar, and free-space communications, and other areas.