Carbon nanotube mode lockers with enhanced nonlinearity via evanescent field interaction in D-shaped fibers

We demonstrate a novel passive mode-locking scheme for pulsed lasers enhanced by the interaction of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with the evanescent field of propagating light in a D-shaped optical fiber. The scheme features all-fiber operation as well as a long lateral interaction length, which guarantees a strong nonlinear effect from the nanotubes. Mode locking is achieved with less than 30% of the CNTs compared with the amount of nanotubes used for conventional schemes. Our method also ensures the preservation of the original morphology of the individual CNTs. The demonstrated pulsed laser with our CNT mode locker has a repetition rate of 5.88 MHz and a temporal pulse width of 470 fs.