Energy scalability of mode-locked oscillators: a completely analytical approach to analysis

A completely analytical approach to analysis of energy-scalable ultrashort-pulse oscillators operating in both normal- and anomalous-dispersion regimes is developed. The theory, based on the approximated solutions of the generalized complex nonlinear Ginzburg-Landau equation allows the problem to be reduced to a purely algebraic model, so that the oscillator characteristics are easy to trace and are completely characterized by only two parameters defining the so-called master diagram of the pulse energy scalability. The proposed theory covers all types of energy-scalable oscillators: all-normal-dispersion fiber, chirped-pulse and thin-disk solid-state ones and is validated by numerical simulations. (c) 2010 Optical Society of America