Title :
Similaritons: a new regime of femtosecond fiber lasers
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Appl. Phys., Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY, USA
Abstract :
We have recently demonstrated theoretically that similaritons can exist in a laser oscillator. Initial attempts to observe and exploit the self-similar regime of operation produced excellent results. A Yb-doped fiber laser designed to approximate the similariton regime produces the parabolic chirped pulses and unique sharp-edged spectrum that are the signatures of self-similar propagation. Optimum performance was obtained by slightly deviating from the self-similar regime, and 50-fs pulses with 5-nJ energy were generated after dechirping. These results represent twice the pulse energy, twice the average power, 5 times the peak power of the previous best femtosecond fiber lasers. In addition, the laser is probably the most efficient femtosecond laser: 240 mW output power is obtained with 500 mW of pump power.
Keywords :
chirp modulation; fibre lasers; laser beams; optical pulse generation; ytterbium; 240 mW; 5 nJ; 50 fs; 500 mW; Yb-doped fiber laser design; dechirping; femtosecond fiber laser; parabolic chirped pulse; self-similar regime; sharp-edged spectrum; similaritons; Chirp; Fiber lasers; Laser theory; Optical design; Optical propagation; Optical pulse generation; Optical pulses; Oscillators; Power lasers; Pump lasers;
Conference_Titel :
Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, 2003. LEOS 2003. The 16th Annual Meeting of the IEEE
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7888-1
DOI :
10.1109/LEOS.2003.1252951