Novel D-shaped fiber fabrication method for saturable absorber application in the generation of ultra-short pulses

A cost-efficient, time-saving and effective technique for the fabrication of D-shaped fibers is presented, to provide a platform with a strong evanescent field to be used as a saturable absorber (SA). This technique provides flexibility by removing the required portion of the fiber, and a small polished length which offers a unique opportunity to deposit SA on its surface by simply submerging it in the SA solution without high losses. A compact fiber laser utilizing a graphene oxide coating on a fabricated D-shaped fiber as an SA capable of generating ultrashort pulses is designed and verified. We report the generation of ultrafast pulses as short as 227 fs with a 34.7 MHz repetition rate, having a 3 dB bandwidth of 14 nm at the 1570 nm center wavelength. (letter)