Sub-60-fs ytterbium-doped fiber laser with a fiber-based dispersion compensation.

We present a mode-locked ytterbium fiber laser with a higher-order mode fiber compensating the group-velocity dispersion and partially the third-order dispersion of the single-mode fiber at a wavelength of 1 microm. The generated pulses had an energy of 0.5 nJ and could be dechirped externally to a pulse duration of less than 60 fs. The power spectrum shows a spectral full width at half-maximum of 57 nm.

Generation of femtosecond pulses at 1350 nm by Cerenkov radiation in higher-order-mode fiber.

We demonstrate a method of generating short pulses at 1350 nm by exciting Cerenkov radiation in a higher-order-mode fiber with a 1064 nm femtosecond fiber laser. We measure a 106 fs, 0.66 nJ output pulse. Cerenkov radiation in fibers allows for energy transfer between a soliton and a dispersive wave, providing an effective and engineerable platform to shift the wavelength of a femtosecond source. With appropriate design of the higher-order-mode fiber, this method of generating short pulses at 1350 nm can be extended to other wavelengths and to higher pulse energies.

Demonstration of soliton self-frequency shift below 1300 nm in higher-order mode, solid silica-based fiber.

We demonstrate soliton self-frequency shift of more than 12% of the optical frequency in a higher-order mode solid, silica-based fiber below 1300nm. This new class of fiber shows great promise for supporting Raman-shifted solitons below 1300nm in intermediate energy regimes of 1 to 10nJ that cannot be reached by index-guided photonic crystal fibers or air-core photonic bandgap fibers. By changing the input pulse energy of 200fs pulses from 1.36 to 1.63nJ we observe Raman-shifted solitons between 1064 and 1200nm with up to 57% power conversion efficiency and compressed output pulse widths less than 50fs. Furthermore, due to the dispersion characteristics of the HOM fiber, we observe redshifted Cerenkov radiation in the normal dispersion regime for appropriately energetic input pulses.

Band-selection filters with concatenated long-period gratings in few-mode fibers.

We demonstrate a novel device that comprises a pair of broadband and narrowband long-period gratings written in specially designed few-mode fibers to achieve in-fiber bandpass filtering. This device configuration opens the possibility of using long-period gratings for complex spectral shaping in a band-selection as opposed to the conventional band-rejection configuration. The devices are low loss (<0.5dB) as well as tunable over large spectral ranges (26 nm). We demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, that the unique dispersive properties of long-period gratings allow for constructing dispersion-free bandpass filters with arbitrarily sharp spectral profiles.