Abstract
A promising new scheme lor ultrashort pulse generation consists of inserting a nonlinear medium in one arm of a mode-locked coupled cavity laser. Experimental studies1–3 have confirmed that the duration of the short pulses emitted by such lasers can be reduced by a large factor (1 or 2 orders of magnitude) due to the nonlinear feedback. The first demonstration of such a laser operation was the soliton laser1 in which the nonlinear medium was an optical fiber with negative dispersion; in such a material, dispersion and selfphase modulation can mutually compensate and lead to the formation of optical solitons. More recently,2,3 it was observed that the use of an optical fiber with a positive dispersion (which does not propagate bright solitons) in a coupled cavity laser has produced ultrashort pulses with a duration similar to that of the pulses emitted by the soliton laser. Hence the process of soliton formation does not appear to be essential for pulse narrowing in such a laser configuration.
© 1989 Optical Society of America
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