STRETCHED-PULSE GENERATION AND PROPAGATION

In this paper we review the stretched-pulse principle and discuss its inherent advantages for ultrashort pulse generation and transmission. An analytic theory of the stretched-pulse fiber laser is presented and shown to ben good agreement with experimental results. An extension o f the stretched-pulse theory is applied to both fiber lasers and dispe rsion-allocated soliton transmission and then compared to numerical re sults. We also discuss the design and operation of an environmentally stable stretched-pulse fiber laser.