Microstructure Fiber Soliton Laser

We demonstrate femtosecond pulse operation of a soliton fiber laser at 1.06-mum wavelength. This laser makes use of a single piece of microstructure fiber that has been designed to simultaneously provide anomalous dispersion and laser gain. Using a saturable absorber mirror with deep modulation depth to initiate and sustain mode-locking, this fiber provides clean and nearly transform-limited pulses down to a pulse duration of 180 fs. To the best of our knowledge, this constitutes the first demonstration of a pure soliton fiber laser in the neodymium gain band