Nonlinear femtosecond pulse compression at high average power levels by use of a large-mode-area holey fiber.
We demonstrate that nonlinear fiber compression is possible at unprecedented average power levels by use of a large-mode-area holey (microstructured) fiber and a passively mode-locked thin disk Yb:YAG laser operating at 1030 nm. We broaden the optical spectrum of the 810-fs pump pulses by nonlinear propagation in the fiber and remove the resultant chirp with a dispersive prism pair to achieve 18 W of average power in 33-fs pulses with a peak power of 12 MW and a repetition rate of 34 MHz. The output beam is nearly diffraction limited and is linearly polarized.
Ultrafast Laser Physics, Institute of Quantum Electronics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Hönggerberg HPT, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland. sudmeyer@phys.ethz.ch
T
T
Südmeyer
F
F
Brunner
E
E
Innerhofer
R
R
Paschotta
K
K
Furusawa
J C
JC
Baggett
T M
TM
Monro
D J
DJ
Richardson
U
U
Keller