Regenerative self-pulsating sources of large bandwidths

Abstract

Self-pulsating sources based on cascaded regeneration by self-phase modulation and offset filtering are investigated experimentally using large filter bandwidths of 3.5 nm and up to semi-infinite bandwidths. In accordance with numerical results reported previously, such sources self-start from amplified spontaneous emission, and picosecond pulses are sustained in a nonlinear cavity. We provide numerical and experimental results indicating the generation of 2 ps pulses and observe 0.4 ps pulses after dispersion compensation and amplification. We also demonstrate that a pair of low- and high-pass filters spawn pulses whose bandwidths are determined by the combination of the filters and gain profiles, hence simplifying the experimental setup for short pulse generation.