title: Graphene based widely-tunable and singly-polarized pulse generation with random fiber lasers.
abstract: Pulse generation often requires a stabilized cavity and its corresponding mode structure for initial phase-locking. Contrastingly, modeless cavity-free random lasers provide new possibilities for high quantum efficiency lasing that could potentially be widely tunable spectrally and temporally. Pulse generation in random lasers, however, has remained elusive since the discovery of modeless gain lasing. Here we report coherent pulse generation with modeless random lasers based on the unique polarization selectivity and broadband saturable absorption of monolayer graphene. Simultaneous temporal compression of cavity-free pulses are observed with such a polarization modulation, along with a broadly-tunable pulsewidth across two orders of magnitude down to 900 ps, a broadly-tunable repetition rate across three orders of magnitude up to 3 MHz, and a singly-polarized pulse train at 41 dB extinction ratio, about an order of magnitude larger than conventional pulsed fiber lasers. Moreover, our graphene-based pulse formation also demonstrates robust pulse-to-pulse stability and wide-wavelength operation due to the cavity-less feature. Such a graphene-based architecture not only provides a tunable pulsed random laser for fiber-optic sensing, speckle-free imaging, and laser-material processing, but also a new way for the non-random CW fiber lasers to generate widely tunable and singly-polarized pulses.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications (Education Ministry of China), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.|Mesoscopic Optics and Quantum Electronics Laboratory, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States.
authors.forename: B C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications (Education Ministry of China), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Y J
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Rao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications (Education Ministry of China), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Z N
authors.initials: ZN
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications (Education Ministry of China), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: J H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications (Education Ministry of China), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications (Education Ministry of China), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: M Q
authors.initials: MQ
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications (Education Ministry of China), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: X L
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications (Education Ministry of China), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: W L
authors.initials: WL
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Y F
authors.initials: YF
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Y R
authors.initials: YR
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, Aston University, Birmingham, B47ET, United Kingdom.|Laboratory of Nonlinear Photonics, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, 630090 Russia.|Institute of Automation and Electrometry, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Churkin
authors.affiliation: Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, Aston University, Birmingham, B47ET, United Kingdom.|Laboratory of Nonlinear Photonics, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, 630090 Russia.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Turitsyn
authors.affiliation: Mesoscopic Optics and Quantum Electronics Laboratory, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States.
authors.forename: C W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Wong