Black phosphorus saturable absorber for dual-wavelength polarization-locked vector soliton generation

We report the usage of few-layered black phosphorus (BP) as saturable absorbers (SAs) to achieve dual-wavelength vector solitons mode locking in an erbium-doped fiber laser for the first time, to our knowledge. The SA is fabricated based on liquid exfoliation method by incorporating BP nanosheets with polyvinyl alcohol. We have demonstrated that the saturable absorption of BP is polarization independent. The laser is capable of generating dual-wavelength polarization-locked vector solitons centered at similar to 1533 and similar to 1558 nm with the bandwidths of similar to 3.7 and similar to 6.9 nm simultaneously. The results indicate the potential applications of few-layered BP as broadband SAs in vector soliton pulses generation. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement