Abstract

Over the past two years the erbium doped optical fibre soliton laser has been extensively investigated as a potential source of ultrashort pulses.^[1–4] Although pulses as short as 290 fsec have been generated by these systems,^[4] the temporal and spectral outputs exhibit characteristic instabilities. In the time domain, the pulse trains show uncontrollable pulse bunching and a quasi periodic structure, while in the spectral domain the instability is initiated through the appearance of characteristic side-bands. It has been suggested^[3] that modulational instability contributes to this spectral development, however, verification of a very simple power independence shows that modulational instability plays nor role.

© 1992 IQEC