Spatiotemporal mode-locking in multimode fiber lasers

A laser is based on the electromagnetic modes of its resonator, which provides the feedback required for oscillation. Enormous progress has been made toward controlling the interactions of longitudinal modes in lasers with a single transverse mode. For example, the field of ultrafast science has been built on lasers that lock many longitudinal modes together to form ultrashort light pulses. However, coherent superposition of longitudinal and transverse modes in a laser has received little attention. We show that modal and chromatic dispersions in fiber lasers can be counteracted by strong spatial and spectral filtering. This allows locking of multiple transverse and longitudinal modes to create ultrashort pulses with a variety of spatiotemporal profiles. Multimode fiber lasers thus open new directions in studies of nonlinear wave propagation and capabilities for applications.