Soliton Mode-Locked Large-Mode-Area Tm-Doped Fiber Oscillator

We report a passively mode-locked fiber oscillator based on thulium-doped large-mode-area (LMA) fiber. Reliably mode-locking soliton operation can be readily achieved after the suppression of the higher-order modes by using mode field adapters in combination with coiling fiber method. The laser delivers 600-fs level pulses at 2~\mu \text{m} with an average power of up to 243 mW and a repetition rate of ~53.7 MHz. The output corresponds to a maximum pulse energy of 4.5 nJ, >5 times larger than that of a similar homemade mode-locked Tm laser with the LMA fibers replaced by single mode fibers, coinciding with theoretical prediction. The successful demonstration of our soliton mode-locked LMA fiber laser at 2~\mu \text{m} offers another strategy for high performance ultrafast fiber sources at mid-infrared region.