Continuum-induced self-stabilization in soliton fiber lasers

Summary form only given. Recent works on mode-locked fiber lasers have demonstrated that intracavity pulse shortening is limited by the coupling of the soliton to the continuum of radiation, i.e., the greater the coupling, the more the loss of the cavity. In this work we describe a mechanism that yields the generation of a soliton much shorter than expected, and this occurs despite these limitations. More specifically, we report on mode-locked laser operation where the solitons are very efficiently stabilized in temporal position by the simultaneous oscillation of their own continuum dispersed throughout the cavity.