  The ultrashort pulse laser operation is crucially defined by engaging
explicit modulators. Conventionally, they are laborious to incorporate into an
all-fibre design or involve the design of sophisticated cavities. We exploit
Thulium-doped fibre as the gain and simple, highly integrated saturable
absorber with a modulation depth of 23% and a high thermal damage threshold.
Hence, pulses as short as 350fs carrying 1nJ energy at a repetition rate of
45MHz have been demonstrated. The laser average output power showed long-term
stability with ~1%. The utilised concept of all-fibre saturable absorber
provides technological grounds for a down-scaled, highly integrated laser
architecture.
