Photonic-waveguide-enabled femtosecond dissipative solitons in mode-locked lasers

We demonstrate that integrating a high-index doped silica glass waveguide into a large-normal-dispersion fiber ring cavity allows cooperative management of dispersion and nonlinear effects. The tightly confined and birefringent photonic waveguide locally releases the polarization, enabling the generation of vector dissipative solitons. Femtosecond dissipative solitons are obtained with intracavity compression ratios of up to 10.1 and a minimum pulse width of 254 fs. Compared with the fiber-only cavity, integrating the photonic waveguide increases the mode-locking RF signal-to-noise ratio by >10 dB and yields a 67.5% reduction in the integrated relative intensity noise (from 0.0873% to 0.0284%) together with a 58.1% decrease in timing jitter (from 1.567 ps to 0.657 ps). The hybrid cavity further strengthens long-term stability, with the 1-hour RMS power fluctuation decreasing from 0.1000% to 0.0381%, with 61.9% improvement. This work extends the capabilities of integrated photonics in mode-locked lasers and advances the development of low-noise ultrafast fiber lasers. © 2026 Optica Publishing Group.