Stable operation of mode-locked fiber lasers:: Similariton regime

A theoretical analysis of the solitary pulse parameters of the Ginzburg-Landau distributed model of a mode-locked laser is presented. For a stable operation, the mode-locked gain (g-l) < 0 is optimized relative to the chirp and a stable operation point is found in the normal dispersion regime. When the energy in the pulse is optimized relative to the mode-locking parameter, a stable point is also found in the normal dispersion regime. The two opmimizations yield the same pulse parameters when the chirp is very large which are the characteristics of the similariton regime. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.