Compression of the self-Q-switching in semiconductor disk lasers with single-layer graphene saturable absorbers

We demonstrate the first use of single layer graphene for compressing self-Q-switching pulses in semiconductor disk lasers. The gain region of the semiconductor disk laser used InGaAs quantum wells with a central wavelength of 1030 nm. Due to self saturable absorption of the quantum wells, the disk laser emitted at the self-Q-switching state with a pulse width of 13 μs. By introducing the single layer graphene as a saturable absorber into the V-shaped laser cavity, the pulse width of the self-pulse was compressed to 2 μs with a lower pump power of 300 mW. As the pump power was increased, multiple pulses with the pulse width of 1.8 μs appeared. The compression factor was about 7.2.