Tantalum pentoxide based on-chip femtosecond pulse compression

In this study, we present experimental and numerical investigations of pulse compression based on high-order soliton dynamics in Ta₂O₅ waveguides. We measure the temporal coherence of supercontinuum generation in the waveguide and deduce the pulse duration using the coherence time-pulse width relation. With a dispersion-engineered waveguide, an input pulse of 140 fs is compressed to 34.26 fs at a coupled peak power of 1.31 kW. Further optimization of dispersion and waveguide design to reduce propagation losses is expected to enable even better compression performance.