Experimental demonstration of sub-two-cycle soliton-effect pulse compression in a photonic crystal fiber

The particular characteristics of photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) allow to apply soliton-effect compression techniques directly to the pulses emitted by femtosecond Ti:Sapphire laser oscillators. These techniques are based on the propagation dynamics of higher-order solitons (N>1) in optical fibers, where the initial pulse narrowing phase can be exploited to obtain self pulse compression once a proper fiber length is chosen. Here, unlike in pulse compression based on spectral broadening in optical fibers, no additional dispersion compensation devices are required.