Abstract

The last few years have brought about significant advances in ultrashort-pulse laser physics and its widespread applications in science and technology. The state of the art of optical pulse generation is now at the point where extremely large optical bandwidths are available. The recent appearance of novel ultrabroad-band solid-state laser materials motivated the development of new ultrafast optical modulation techniques that are capable of shaping optical pulses down to a few femtoseconds in duration. The discovery of "self-mode-locking, " and the exploitation of a "solitonlike" interplay between self-phase modulation and anomalous dispersion have been the major steps towards a powerful new femtosecond laser technology based on solid-state gain materials and their nonresonant nonlinear index of refraction. Intensive theoretical and experimental research has resulted in a good understanding of the principal effects limiting pulse shortening and stability, leading to the construction of extremely compact solid-state sources of stable and reproducible optical pulses down to the 10-fs regime.

© 1994 IEEE