ULTRASHORT-PULSE FIBER RING LASERS

This paper reviews recent progress on ultrashort pulse generation with erbium-doped fiber ring lasers. The passive mode-locking technique of polarization additive pulse mode-locking (P-APM) is used to generate stable, self-starting, sub-500 fs pulses at the fundamental repetition rate from a unidirectional fiber ring laser operating in the soliton regime. Saturation of the APM, spectral sideband generation, and intra cavity filtering are discussed. Harmonic mode-locking of fiber ring la sers with soliton pulse compression is addressed, and stability region s for the solitons are mapped and compared with theoretical prediction s. The stretched-pulse laser, which incorporates segments of positive- and negative-dispersion fiber into the P-APM fiber ring, generates sh orter (sub-100 fs) pulses with broader bandwidths (> 65 nm) and higher pulse energies (up to 2.7 nJ). We discuss optimization of the net dis persion of the stretched-pulse laser, use of the APM rejection port as the laser output port, and frequency doubling for amplifier seed appl ications. We also review the analytical theory of the stretched-pulse laser as well as discuss the excellent noise characteristics of both t he soliton and stretched-pulse lasers.