Abstract
Ultrafast lasers have led to numerous advances across science and technology: they enabled corneal surgery1, revealed chemical reaction dynamics2 and triggered the development of optical atomic clocks3. Over the past decades, extensive efforts have aimed to realize mode-locked lasers based on photonic integrated circuits (PICs) that are compact, manufactured at wafer scale and are compatible with further on-chip functionalities4,5,6. Yet, existing demonstrations to date lack the pulse energy required to drive nonlinear processes, such as supercontinuum generation. Here we demonstrate a mode-locked laser that overcomes this challenge through the use of erbium-ion-implanted silicon nitride PICs7. The laser is based on the Mamyshev oscillator architecture8, in which alternating spectral filtering and self-phase modulation enable mode-locking and can support large nonlinear phase shifts9. It operates without external seeding, delivering a 176-MHz pulse train with nanojoule pulse energy, comparable with fibre lasers and exceeding previous PIC-based sources by two orders of magnitude. The output exhibits high coherence, can be linearly compressed to 147 fs and can directly drive a 1.5-octave-spanning supercontinuum in a Si3N4 waveguide, without any further amplification. A compact terahertz time-domain spectrometer driven by this source achieved a bandwidth of 5 THz and a 90-dB dynamic range. We demonstrate its application in non-contact chemical analysis and inspection. Our results show the potential of an integrated ultrafast laser, with applications ranging from chip-scale frequency metrology to portable spectroscopy systems.
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Data availability
All experimental datasets used to produce the results are available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18732610)55.
Code availability
The laser simulation code is available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18732610)55.
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Acknowledgements
The samples were partially fabricated in the EPFL Center of MicroNanoTechnology. The ion implantation was carried out at the Ion Beam Center of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. We thank J. Riemensberger for the design and J. Liu and R. Ning Wang for the fabrication of the D7803 device used in the supercontinuum generation demonstration. We thank H. Li for help with wafer dicing. This work is supported by funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant Agreement No. 216493, HEROIC). This manuscript is based upon work supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Award No. FA9550-25-1-0259).
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Contributions
Z.Q. and Z. Liu conceived the work. Z.Q. and J.H. performed the numerical simulations and designed the Mamyshev oscillator with help from J.S. and Z. Liu. Z.Q. fabricated the D206 devices (excluding ion implantation) with substantial help from Y.Z., X.J., X.L. and Z. Li. U.K. performed the ion implantation. Z.Q. and X.Y. performed the MLL demonstration experiment and processed the data with help from G.L., J.H. and X.L. Z.Q. and J.H. performed the supercontinuum generation experiment. X.L. and Z.Q. performed the THz-TDS experiment with help from X.Y. Z.Q., J.H. and X.L. wrote the Article with contributions from all co-authors. T.J.K. supervised the work.
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Z.Q., X.Y., and T.J.K. are co-inventors on patent applications regarding the integrated Mamyshev oscillator. T.J.K. is co-founder of EDWATEC SA, a company offering optical amplifiers on-chip. The other authors declare no competing interests.
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Extended data figures and tables
Extended Data Fig. 1 Waveguide loss after ion implantation measured by OFDR.
The dashed line denotes the estimated background loss outside of the erbium absorption band.
Extended Data Fig. 2 Heterodyne beat note.
a to i, Heterodyne beat note at 9 individual wavelengths from 1530 nm to 1570 nm.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information (download PDF )
This file includes Supplementary Notes 1–11 covering performance benchmarks; simulations and modelling of the laser and supercontinuum generation; detailed descriptions of the experimental set-up; notes on fibre-to-chip coupling, pulse reconstruction and simulations of single-pass pulse amplification.
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Qiu, Z., Yang, X., Li, X. et al. High-pulse-energy integrated mode-locked laser using a Mamyshev oscillator. Nature 654, 57–63 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10517-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10517-4
