Various large-energy soliton operations within an Er-doped fiber laser with bismuth selenide as a saturable absorber.

Different large-energy mode-locked operations were successfully obtained within a BiSe-based Er-doped fiber laser. First, mode-locked operation with maximum pulse energy of 17.2 nJ and pulse width of 187 ns under a pulse repetition rate of 537.6 kHz was obtained under the pump power of 680 mW. In addition, the characteristics of dark solitons and soliton rains, which also exhibit large pulse energies, have been investigated experimentally. Our results fully proved that BiSe was an excellent candidate for investigating various mode-locked operations with large pulse energy due to its high nonlinear effect and high damage threshold.