Abstract
A diode-pumped self-Q-switched erbium-doped fibre laser is developed and studied. The laser has an all-fibre configuration containing a piece of an active heavily erbium-doped fibre and two fibre Bragg grating mirrors and does not require any additional intracavity elements to obtain short pulses. Analysis of the laser operation suggests that the most probable mechanism of passive Q-switching of the laser cavity is absorption from the excited state of erbium resulting in the thermally induced nonlinear change in the refractive index in the erbium-doped fibre.