Divided-pulse lasers

We demonstrate the use of coherent division and recombination of the pulse within an ultrafast laser cavity to manage the nonlinear phase accumulation and scale the output pulse energy. We implement the divided-pulse technique in an ytterbium-doped fiber laser and achieve 16 times scaling of the pulse energy, to generate 6 nJ and 1.4 ps solitons in single-mode fiber. Potential extensions of this concept are discussed.