Generation of ultrashort pulse with high peak power using Mach-Zehnder-modulator-based flat comb generator and chirped pulse amplification

Optical ultrashort pulses are used in wide application areas, such as a light source for millimeter/terahertz wave sources for high-speed wireless communication systems, optical sampling technologies, and so forth. For these applications, ultrashort pulse sources are required to have compactness, high stability, low timing jitter, and tunability in both wavelength and repetition rate for high accuracy measurements. An ultrashort optical pulse source using a Mach-Zehnder-modulator (MZM)-based flat comb generator (MZ-FCG) and a nonlinear pulse compressor is a good candidate for such a source. However, the peak power of femtosecond pulses is limited by the compression condition of the pulse compressor. In this paper, we report on high peak power pulse generation by combining the MZ-FCG ultrashort pulse source with a chirped pulse amplifier (CPA).