Dispersion management in an actively modelocked fiber laser with Kerr nonlinearity

Summary form only given. Fiber lasers that are used in optical communication systems should generate a train of pulses with high repetition rate and low pulse dropout. Recently, an actively modelocked laser that generates a stable train of short pulses with a repetition rate of 10 GHz and pulse dropout of less than 10/sup -12/ was demonstrated. Dispersion management was used in the cavity of the laser. In the work we analyze the laser reported previously and demonstrate excellent agreement between the theory and the experiment. The behavior of this laser is compared theoretically to that of a laser with a uniform dispersion map. The use of dispersion management in actively modelocked lasers which operate in high harmonic mode was found to significantly increase the range of pulse durations over which stable operation can be achieved. Therefore, dispersion management decreases the minimum pulse width below the basic limitation imposed on lasers with a uniform dispersion map by the growth of continuum due to the finite gain bandwidth. In previous work, dispersion management or stretched-pulse additive pulse modelocking in passively modelocked fiber lasers was used in order to increase the pulse energy and improve the laser performance.