Compact fiber laser provides highly stable femtosecond pulses

Scientists at IMRA America (Ann Arbor, MI) developed a compact femtosecond erbium-doped fiber oscillator that is environmentally stable and can operate without realignment under all laboratory conditions. IMRA spokesman Mike Dearing said the device is "an ultrafast laser in a box no one needs to touch." The laser produces 200-fs, 1.56-µm pulses at the center of the erbium gain curve, making it possible to amplify the output to energies useful for such processes as nonlinear conversion. Chirped pulse amplification with in-fiber Bragg gratings produced 400-fs, 10-nJ pulses with 50-mW average power. By using external metal gratings, the researchers obtained 450-fs, 2.5-µJ pulses.

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