  A compact, strictly all-fiber, picosecond pulse source based on ytterbium
(Yb) doped fiber is described. Stable solitary mode-locking is obtained in a
fiber-oscillator utilizing a carefully designed chirped fiber-Bragg-grating
(C-FBG) for both dispersion control and spectral filtering. Self-starting is
assured through the use of a fiber-coupled
semiconductor-saturable-absorber-mirror (SESAM). The oscillator's 50MHz 3.8ps
pulse-train output at 1064nm wavelength is amplified to 1.2W average power by
an Yb doped fiber-amplifier, yielding 6.45ps parabolic pulses. Numerical
simulations of the fiber oscillator design based on the modified nonlinear
Schrodinger equation (NLSE), agree well with the experimental results.
