Burst-mode Yb:fiber chirped pulse amplification system seeded by a multi-soliton bunch fiber laser

Abstract

We demonstrated a burst-mode Yb:fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system with a seed laser operating in the multi-soliton bunch regime. The multi-soliton bunch operation from a figure-9 fiber laser was obtained by adjusting the pump power properly, where the pulse number can be tuned flexibly from 1 to 3. The CPA system delivers bursts at a repetition rate of 16.34 MHz, while each burst comprise 3 pulses with an interval of 3.96 ns. When the pump power of the main amplifier is increased to 24 W, the maximum output power and energy of the pulse burst is 5.38 W and 329.25 nJ, respectively. The pulse duration could be further reduced to 592 fs with a grating-pair compressor. The proposed scheme provides an alternative seed laser source for burst-mode CPA systems, which will be beneficial to the design of flexible high-power femtosecond lasers.