Observation of High-Order Femtosecond Solitons in a Self-Mode-Locked Ti:Sapphire Laser

The N = 3 femtosecond solitonlike pulses are observed directly in a self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser as well as even higher-order solitonlike pulses for the first time. When the laser is operating in a stable train of mode-locked pulses, the periodic pulse train appears by only varying the intracavity dispersion. The soliton period with N = 3 corresponds to a cavity round trip number of 164.