Abstract

Multiple-core fiber lasers and amplifiers offer an attractive strategy for upscaling the energy parameters of fiber-based sources. Such fibers can provide larger mode areas and reduce heat- and stress-induced beam distortions in high-power fiber lasers and amplifiers. However, a high beam quality of a multicore-fiber output can be achieved only when the individual core outputs are phase-locked [1-3]. Implementation of such a phase locking is especially challenging for fiber systems designed to generate and amplify ultrashort light pulses. Here, we show that multicore photonic-crystal fibers (PCFs) provide an advantageous platform for the solution of this problem, enabling the generation of sub-100-fs microjoule light pulses at repetition rates as high as 50 MHz.

© 2011 Optical Society of America