Ultrafast fiber lasers and nonlinear generation of light

In this paper, we describe compact laser sources based on high-power amplification in Yb-doped silica fibers of ultra-stable mode-locked pulses from an all-fiber oscillator. The interplay between third-order nonlinearity, gain and chromatic dispersion in the polarization-maintaining fiber amplifier is engineered to produce high-quality, high-energy pulses suitable for nonlinear generation of light in optical fibers. In particular, the generation of high-energy supercontinuum in photonic-crystal fibers, and the generation of transform-limited femtosecond pulses facilitated by the Raman soliton self-frequency shift effect in hollow-core photonic-bandgap fibers is herein described. Such sources have allowed the development of novel tools for fundamental research and industrial applications in a variety of fields ranging from microscopy to material processing.