Sup-picosecond, transform limited pulse generation in fiber CPA systems utilizing spectral pulse shaping with adaptive feedback loop

Abstract

Fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) systems have many advantages such as size compactness and significant simplification of complex optical components over bulk solid state amplifiers. Moreover, precise optical alignment in free space is not required. However, fiber CPA systems are also much more vulnerable to nonlinear effects due to their small mode areas and long interaction length, resulting in pulse distortion, and consequently, degradation of pulse quality. Pulse with parabolic intensity profile appears to be a very good candidate to mitigate such degradation effects and wave-breaking. Furthermore, its linear chirp allows efficient pulse compression to achieve high peak power, making it highly attractive to CPA systems. CPA systems with parabolic pulses therefore can have widespread use in applications such as super-continuum generation, optic fiber communications, thermal ablation, and ultrafast all-optical signal processing.