HIGH-POWER NEODYMIUM SOLITON FIBER LASER THAT USES A CHIRPED FIBER GRATING

The use of a highly chirped fiber Bragg grating for dispersion compens ation in a self-starting passively mode-locked neodymium soliton fiber laser is demonstrated for the first time to our knowledge. By employi ng an appropriately designed saturable absorber as the mode-locking el ement and limiting polarization-dependent loss in the cavity, we obtai n polarization-insensitive operation of the laser, and no intracavity polarization controllers are required for its optimization. The laser generated bandwidth-limited pulses of 6-ps duration with output energi es as high as 1.25 nJ. (C) 1995 Optical Society of America