Fission free high-energy mode-locked soliton generation in an all-polarization-maintaining fiber laser

By employing a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror into an all-polarization-maintaining fiber laser, the effective evolution length of high-energy pulses is shorter than the soliton fission length. A stable self-starting mode-locked soliton fiber laser delivers 1.19 nJ high-energy soliton free of soliton fission, which is confirmed both in spectral and temporal domain measurements. A seventh-order soliton with an estimated energy of 4.47 nJ is able to stably oscillate in the laser resonator. Two segments symmetrically placed gain fibers can be pumped independently, providing a large gain with a large power tuning range. In general, the results obtained here can be used for other wavelengths, and, in principle, can circumvent the limitation on the soliton laser output energy.