Normal dispersion erbium-doped fiber laser with pulse energies above 10 nJ

We report on an erbium-doped fiber oscillator mode-locked by nonlinear polarization evolution operating in the large normal dispersion regime. The setup produced highly chirped 10 nJ pulses at 37MHz which can be compressed externally to below 75 fs. Hence, this simple and practical setup is capable of providing ultrashort pulses with a peak power of 140kW. The pulse formation is indeed subject to intrapulse Raman-scattering but a clean and stable pulse train can be observed. The similarities as well as the differences of the output characteristics to the parabolic pulse and wave breaking-free regime are explicated. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.