High-energy femtosecond pulses from an ytterbium-doped fiber laser with a new cavity design

A new architecture which is based on the chirped pulse amplification scheme is proposed to increase the pulse energy of the mode-locked fiber laser. The idea was applied to a passively mode-locked laser using an ytterbium (Yb³⁺)-doped double-clad silica fiber. Mode-locking was achieved by nonlinear polarization evolution associated to frequency-shifted feedback technique for self-starting. A compressor and a stretcher, based on diffraction gratings, permitted us to manage the dispersion and to reduce the pulse power in the fiber. The laser delivered chirped pulses at 1050 nm with 11.8-nJ energy at a 9.3-MHz repetition rate (110-mW average power) which were subsequently compressed to 196-fs duration.