Observation of gain-pinned dissipative solitons in a microcavity laser

We demonstrate an experimental approach to create dissipative solitons in a microcavity laser. In particular, we shape the spatial gain profile of a quasi-one-dimensional microcavity laser with a nonresonant, pulsed optical pump to create spatially localised structures, called gain-pinned dissipative solitons that exist due to the balance of gain and nonlinear losses and are confined to a diffraction-limited volume. The ultrafast formation dynamics and decay of the gain-pinned solitons are probed directly, showing that they are created on a picosecond timescale, orders of magnitude faster than laser cavity solitons. All of the experimentally observed features and dynamics are reconstructed by using a standard complex Ginzburg-Landau model.