Adjustable pulse compression scheme for generation of few-cycle pulses in the midinfrared

A novel adjustable adiabatic soliton compression scheme is presented, enabling a coherent pulse source with pedestal-free, few-cycle pulses in the infrared or midinfrared regime. This scheme relies on interaction of a dispersive wave and a soliton copropagating at nearly identical group velocities in a fiber with enhanced infrared transmission. The compression is achieved directly in one stage, without the necessity of an external compensation scheme. Numerical simulations are employed to demonstrate this scheme for silica and fluoride fibers, indicating ultimate limitations as well as the possibility of compression down to the single-cycle regime. Such output pulses appear to be ideally suited as seed sources for parametric amplification schemes in the midinfrared.