  Saturable absorbers are a key component for mode-locking femtosecond lasers.
Polymer films containing graphene flakes have recently been used in
transmission as laser mode-lockers, but suffer from high nonsaturable loss,
limiting their application in low-gain lasers. Here we present a saturable
absorber mirror based on a film of pure graphene flakes. The device is used to
mode lock an erbium-doped fiber laser, generating pulses with state-of-the-art,
sub-200-fs duration. The laser characteristic indicate that the film exhibits
low nonsaturable loss (13% per pass) and large absorption modulation depth (45%
of low-power absorption).
