title: High quality sub-two cycle pulses from compression of supercontinuum generated in all-normal dispersion photonic crystal fiber.
abstract: We demonstrate nonlinear pulse compression based on recently introduced highly coherent broadband supercontinuum (SC) generation in all-normal dispersion photonic crystal fiber (ANDi PCF). The special temporal properties of the octave-spanning SC spectra generated with 15 fs, 1.7 nJ pulses from a Ti:Sapphire oscillator in a 1.7 mm fiber piece allow the compression to 5.0 fs high quality pulses by linear chirp compensation with a compact chirped mirror compressor. This is the shortest pulse duration achieved to date from the external recompression of SC pulses generated in PCF. Numerical simulations in excellent agreement with the experimental results are used to discuss the scalability of the concept to the single-cycle regime employing active phase shaping. We show that previously reported limits to few-cycle pulse generation from compression of SC spectra generated in conventional PCF possessing one or more zero dispersion wavelengths do not apply for ANDi PCF.
authors.affiliation: Photonics Group, Department of Physics, Blackett Laboratory, South Kensington Campus, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
authors.forename: Alexander M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Heidt
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rothhardt
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hartung
authors.forename: Hartmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bartelt
authors.forename: Erich G
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Rohwer
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Limpert
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tünnermann