Ultrashort-pulse generation from high-power diode arrays by using intracavity optical nonlinearities

A 40-stripe diode array was actively mode locked in an external cavity containing a single-mode optical fiber and a six-prism sequence to provide self-phase-modulation and tunable dispersion compensation. By making the total cavity group-velocity dispersion strongly negative, a solitonlike pulse-shaping process could be created. Pulses as short as 650 fs with a time-bandwidth product of 0.47 were generated. This study extends new techniques developed for mode locking solid-state lasers to diode-based systems.