Abstract

Much of the work on ultrashort pulse generation in erbium-doped fiber lasers has concentrated on the generation of soiltons.^1–4 When operating in the soli ton regime, the pulses in the cavity must be close to fundamental solitons. Soliton instability phenomena then limit pulse duration/energy and cause strong phase-matched coupling of the pulse to linear dispersive waves that lead to sharp sidebands in the pulse spectrum.⁵

© 1994 Optical Society of America