The Soliton Laser

Abstract

The soliton laser, a novel concept in ultrashort-pulse lasers, is a mode-locked laser using pulse compression and solitons in a single-mode fiber to force the laser itself to produce pulses of a well-defined shape and width. Thus the fiber is in one way or another involved in the laser’s feedback loop. Although the basic concept is a general one, we report here primarily on the first successful version[1], based on a sync-pumped, mode-locked color-center laser operating in the 1.5 pm region. To date this color-center soliton laser has directly produced pulses as short as 130 fsec, and has allowed for the production of pulses of as little as 50 fsec FWHM, by compression in a second, external fiber. Other advantages include wide tunability (limited only by power requirements for soliton production in the fiber), output pulses that are always transform limited, easy adjustment for production of ^~sech² pulse shape. and a relative simplicity of construction.