Stable Gain-Guided Soliton Propagation in a Polarized Yb-Doped Mode-Locked Fiber Laser

We demonstrate gain-guided dissipative soliton operation of a linearly polarized Yb-doped fiber laser, mode-locked by carbon nanotubes. In the regime of low nonlinear phase shift per cavity roundtrip, a dissipative soliton pulse can be supported by the finite gain bandwidth, without the need for strong spectral selection. The gain-guiding dynamics are confirmed by simulations.