  Soliton explosions are among the most exotic dissipative phenomena studied in
mode-locked lasers. In this regime, a dissipative soliton circulating in the
laser cavity experiences an abrupt structural collapse, but within a few
roundtrips returns to its original quasi-stable state. In this work we report
on the first observation of such events in a fiber laser. Specifically, we
identify clear explosion signatures in measurements of shot-to-shot spectra of
an Yb-doped mode-locked fiber laser that is operating in a transition regime
between stable and noise-like emission. The comparatively long,
all-normal-dispersion cavity used in our experiments also permits direct
time-domain measurements, and we show that the explosions manifest themselves
as abrupt temporal shifts in the output pulse train. Our experimental results
are in good agreement with realistic numerical simulations based on an
iterative cavity map.
