A. Dienes et al., FEMTOSECOND OPTICAL PULSE AMPLIFICATION IN SATURATED MEDIA, Journal of the Optical Society of America. B, Optical physics, 13(4), 1996, pp. 725-734
The generalized form of a nonlinear equation modeling the evolution of
femtosecond pulses in a wide range of laser media is derived. Togethe
r with auxiliary equations, it describes both amplitude and phase chan
ges owing to a variety of linear and nonlinear effects. These effects
include gain saturation, more than one kind of self-phase modulation,
and both gain and phase dispersions. The model is applied to previous
experiments of ultrashort-pulse amplification in a dye-laser amplifier
and is found to describe quantitatively the observed strong spectral
changes. We show that the spectral changes are due both to gain disper
sion and to the interplay of various dispersive and nonlinear effects.
(C) 1996 Optical Society of America