Stretched pulse Yb(3+)silica fiber laser

Area of Science:

• Laser Physics
• Fiber Optics
• Materials Science

Background:

• Development of compact and efficient ultrashort pulse sources is crucial for various scientific and technological applications.
• Ytterbium-doped (Yb(3+)) silica fiber lasers offer potential advantages due to their broad emission bandwidth and robustness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the feasibility of generating ultrashort pulses from Yb(3+) :silica fiber lasers.
• To investigate the performance of a novel fiber laser configuration for short-pulse generation.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the stretched pulse technique in a unidirectional, polarization-switching Yb(3+) fiber laser.
• Incorporated a prism-based dispersive delay line for pulse compression.
• Achieved self-starting mode-locking.

Main Results:

• Successfully generated self-starting mode-locked pulses with an energy of 100 pJ.
• Compressed the pulses to achieve chirp-free durations of less than 100 femtoseconds (fs).
• Demonstrated the first results on short-pulse generation in Yb(3+) :silica fiber.

Conclusions:

• Yb(3+) :silica fiber lasers are capable of producing high-quality femtosecond pulses.
• These sources hold significant potential for all-solid-state, high-power femtosecond systems.
• The generated pulses can serve as seeds for conventional neodymium-doped (Nd(3+)) :glass amplifier chains.