108 fs high-power mode locked double-clad ytterbium-doped fiber laser using FePS₃ saturable absorber

Femtosecond fiber lasers with a high peak power are of great interest due to their various real-world applications. This work uses a double-clad ytterbium-doped fiber (DC-YDF) as the gain medium to successfully generate mode-locked pulses with a high peak power of hundreds of kilowatts at the 1 μm wavelength. The pulse width of the mode-locked pulses was as short as 108 fs, with a fundamental frequency of 1.9 MHz. The highest average power output, energy pulse, and peak power of the mode-locked pulses were 114.5 mW, 58.4 nJ, and 540.7 kW, respectively. The mode-locked fiber laser operates at a center wavelength of 1052 nm with normal net-cavity dispersion, which shows characteristics of a dissipative soliton. The mode-locked pulses exhibit good stability, as demonstrated by the measurement of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 40 dB. It is the very first instance of high-power short pulses mode-locked in the 1 μm range being shown utilizing a DC-YDF with a two-dimensional (2D) material-based saturable absorber (SA) into the laser cavity.