Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Mode-locked lasers generate short pulses of intense coherent light. Just like a guitar string, laser cavities can support many different frequencies, or resonant modes. A train of picosecond or femtosecond pulses can be produced by actively or passively controlling the light in the cavity so that these different resonant modes interfere.
An integrated high-energy laser that combines a passively Q-switched laser cavity based on a silicon-nitride photonic integrated circuit with an optically pumped gain layer consisting of thulium-doped alumina is reported, representing a pivotal advancement in integrated pulsed lasers.
Here the authors demonstrate a universal approach to achieve turnkey dissipative Kerr soliton (DKS) frequency comb. Phase insensitivity, self-healing capability, deterministic selection of DKS state, and access to ultralow noise are all successfully accomplished.
Pulses of adjustable duration are generated by a mode-locked random fibre laser that can drive advances in sensing. Rayleigh backscattering from cm-long sections of telecom fibre provides laser feedback and spectral selectivity to the Fourier limit.
Despite the wide use of mode-locked lasers, no general theory for mode-locking exists. An attractor dissection approach provides some intuitive understanding of the complex dynamics in one type of mode-locking.