Exploitation of stimulated Raman scattering in short-pulse fiber amplifiers.

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) generally limits the performance of short-pulse fiber amplifiers. We present the results of experiments that show that, under some conditions, SRS can extend the performance of amplifiers limited by nonlinear phase accumulation. The Stokes spectrum can be free of distortions arising from self-phase modulation and can circumvent the gain-narrowing limit of the amplifier.

Efficient temporal shaping of ultrashort pulses with birefringent crystals.

We report on a simple and robust technique to temporally shape ultrashort pulses. A number of birefringent crystals with appropriate crystal length and orientation form a crystal set. When a short pulse propagates through the crystal set, the pulse is divided into numerous pulses, producing a desired temporal shape.

Demonstration of soliton self-frequency shift below 1300 nm in higher-order mode, solid silica-based fiber.

We demonstrate soliton self-frequency shift of more than 12% of the optical frequency in a higher-order mode solid, silica-based fiber below 1300nm. This new class of fiber shows great promise for supporting Raman-shifted solitons below 1300nm in intermediate energy regimes of 1 to 10nJ that cannot be reached by index-guided photonic crystal fibers or air-core photonic bandgap fibers. By changing the input pulse energy of 200fs pulses from 1.

Divided-pulse amplification of ultrashort pulses.

We propose and demonstrate a new approach, to the best of our knowledge, for avoiding nonlinear effects in the amplification of ultrashort optical pulses. The initial pulse is divided longitudinally into a sequence of lower-energy pulses that are otherwise identical to the original, except for the polarization. The low-intensity pulses are amplified and then recombined to create a final intense pulse.

Passive harmonic mode-locking of a soliton Yb fiber laser at repetition rates to 1.5 GHz.

We report passive harmonic mode locking of a soliton Yb fiber laser at repetition rates continuously scalable up to 1.5 GHz. The laser generates transform-limited 500 fs pulses, with pulse energies of 30-100 pJ.

Compensation of nonlinear phase shifts with third-order dispersion in short-pulse fiber amplifiers.

We show that nonlinear phase shifts and third-order dispersion can compensate each other in short-pulse fiber amplifiers. This compen-sation can be exploited in any implementation of chirped-pulse amplification, with stretching and compression accomplished with diffraction gratings, single-mode fiber, microstructure fiber, fiber Bragg gratings, etc. In particular, we consider chirped-pulse fiber amplifiers at wavelengths for which the fiber dispersion is normal.