66 W average power from a microjoule-class sub-100 fs fiber oscillator

Performance scaling of passively mode-locked ultrashort-pulse fiber oscillators in terms of average power, peak power, and pulse energy is demonstrated. A very-large-mode-area fiber laser in an all-positive group-velocity-dispersion ring cavity configuration with intracavity spectral filter, mode-locked by nonlinear polarization evolution, emits 66 W of average power at 76 MHz repetition rate, corresponding to 0.9 mu J pulse energy. The pulses are dechirped to 91 fs outside the cavity with an average power of 60 W remaining after the compressor. The generated pulse peak power is as high as 7 MW. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America