All-fiber integrated ∼10kW peak power ultrashort optical pulse source based on compression in aircore photonic band gap fiber

Abstract

We demonstrate an all-fiber integrated, ∼10kW peak power, ∼1ps optical pulse source at a wavelength of 1.55μm based on compression in aircore photonic band gap fiber. A 10GHz pulse train was modulated at 10MHz in a Mach–Zehnder amplitude modulator with a ∼1ns transmission window before stretching in 100m of dispersion compensating fiber, amplifying, and recompressing in 10m of aircore photonic band gap fiber. Numerical simulations show that if the aircore fiber dispersion slope could be made negligible, the achievable peak power would be increased by a factor of approximately 2.