The paper by Bao et al. explores the use of atomic layer graphene as a saturable absorber in mode-locked fiber lasers, demonstrating its potential for generating ultrashort soliton pulses at the telecommunication band. The optical conductance of monolayer graphene is defined by the fine structure constant, α, and its absorbance is predicted to be frequency-independent. Under strong excitation, the interband optical absorption in zero-gap graphene can be saturated due to Pauli blocking. The authors show that atomic layer graphene can be used to modulate the laser output, with the modulation depth ranging from 66.5% to 6.2% by varying the thickness of the graphene film. This makes ultrathin graphene films potentially useful as optical elements in fiber lasers, offering advantages such as lower saturation intensity, ultrafast recovery time, tunable modulation depth, and wideband tuneability. The study also includes detailed characterization of the graphene films, including Raman spectroscopy and optical contrast measurements, and numerical simulations to confirm the measured saturable absorption properties. The results suggest that graphene is a promising material for developing low-noise and inexpensive light sources in optical communications.The paper by Bao et al. explores the use of atomic layer graphene as a saturable absorber in mode-locked fiber lasers, demonstrating its potential for generating ultrashort soliton pulses at the telecommunication band. The optical conductance of monolayer graphene is defined by the fine structure constant, α, and its absorbance is predicted to be frequency-independent. Under strong excitation, the interband optical absorption in zero-gap graphene can be saturated due to Pauli blocking. The authors show that atomic layer graphene can be used to modulate the laser output, with the modulation depth ranging from 66.5% to 6.2% by varying the thickness of the graphene film. This makes ultrathin graphene films potentially useful as optical elements in fiber lasers, offering advantages such as lower saturation intensity, ultrafast recovery time, tunable modulation depth, and wideband tuneability. The study also includes detailed characterization of the graphene films, including Raman spectroscopy and optical contrast measurements, and numerical simulations to confirm the measured saturable absorption properties. The results suggest that graphene is a promising material for developing low-noise and inexpensive light sources in optical communications.