No abstract

We demonstrate an environmentally stable Kerr-type mode-locked erbium fiber laser producing 360-fs near-bandwidth-limited pulses. Environmentally stable operation is possible in the presence of nonpolarization-maintaining fiber components provided that their overall length is short compared with the length of the polarization-maintaining fiber components. The pulses are generated at a stable repetition rate of 27 MHz and have an energy content of 60 pJ.

A Raman-shifted and frequency-doubled high-power Er-fiber soliton laser for seeding an efficient high-power Yb fiber femtosecond amplifier is demonstrated. The Raman-shifted and frequency-doubled Er-soliton laser is tunable from 1.00 to 1.070microm and produces bandwidth-limited 24-pJ pulses at a repetition rate of 50 MHz with a FWHM pulse width of 170 fs at 1.040microm . The Yb(3+) amplifier has a slope efficiency of 52% and generates 3-ps linearly chirped pulses with an average power of 0.8 W at 1.05microm . After pulse compression, 74-fs bandwidth-limited pulses with an average power of 0.4 W and a pulse energy of 8 nJ are generated.

We present a high energy amplifier similariton laser based on chirally-coupled core fiber. Chirped pulse energies up to 61 nJ at 3.3 W average power are obtained with effectively singlemode output. The pulses can be compressed with a simple grating compressor to durations below 90 fs. We demonstrate for the first time a fused pump-signal combiner to confirm the integration potential of chirally-coupled core fibers.

100 fs pulses are generated in passively mode-locked erbium fiber lasers with small negative group-velocity dispersion. The pulses are obtained at a pump power significantly higher than the mode-locking threshold. An optimization of fiber lengths leads to the elimination of pedestal formation and the generation of stable pulse trains with high contrast ratios.