High-peak-power femtosecond pulse compression with polarization-maintaining ytterbium-doped fiber amplification

We report the generation of 140 fs pulses with a peak power of up to 270 kW using a fiber pulse source based on a polarization-maintaining ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier and a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror mode-locked fiber laser seed. The seed laser pulses were amplified and chirped in t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics letters 2007-05, Vol.32 (10), p.1199-1201
Main Authors: KENNEDY, R. E, RULKOV, A. B, POPOV, S. V, TAYLOR, J. R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Exact sciences and technology
Fiber lasers
Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications)
Lasers
Nonlinear optics
Optics
Physics
Ultrafast processes
optical pulse generation and pulse compression
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Summary:We report the generation of 140 fs pulses with a peak power of up to 270 kW using a fiber pulse source based on a polarization-maintaining ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier and a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror mode-locked fiber laser seed. The seed laser pulses were amplified and chirped in the fiber amplifier and subsequently compressed in an external transmission grating pair. The use of a polarization-maintaining amplifier addresses nonlinear polarization-induced limitations to the obtainable compressed pulse duration and quality that can arise if isotropic fiber amplification is used. Numerical simulations of the system support the experimental measurements and also confirm the role of fiber dispersion in obtaining high-quality compressed pulses.
ISSN:0146-9592
1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/OL.32.001199