  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.
