Microfiber-enabled dissipative soliton fiber laser at 2 μm

Optical microfibers can show very strong normal dispersion (as high as 2700 ps2/km) around 2 μm, a highly desired feature for dispersion management in ultrafast lasers. Here we report a dissipative soliton fiber laser at 2 μm enabled by an optical microfiber. The full width at half-maximum of the optical spectrum was about 50 nm, and its flatness could be attributed to the third-order dispersion compensation provided by the optical microfiber. The pulse duration was measured to be 195 fs after a dechirping single-mode fiber. Our results suggest a new route to dissipative soliton fiber lasers at 2 μm, with a wide and flat spectrum and thus a short dechirped pulse.