Abstract

Many currently pursued applications of femtosecond erbium fiber lasers would greatly benefit from the availability of higher pulse energies and higher pulse repetition rates than presently available from compact oscillator designs. However, though erbium oscillator designs have been developed that allow the generation of femtosecond pulses with energies in excess of 1 nJ and passive harmonic mode-locking has allowed the extension of achievable repetition rates into the GHz regime, the distribution of such lasers has been limited because they relied on the use of expensive high-power pump lasers such as MOPAs¹ or Ti:sapphire lasers.²

© 1996 Optical Society of America