High-energy, sub-100 fs, all-fiber stretched-pulse mode-locked Er-doped ring laser with a highly-nonlinear resonator

We report on ultra-short stretched pulse generation in an all-fiber erbium-doped ring laser with a highly-nonlinear germanosilicate fiber inside the resonator with a slightly positive net-cavity group velocity dispersion (GVD). Stable 84 fs pulses were obtained with a 12 MHz repetition rate at a central wavelength of 1560 nm with a 48.1 nm spectral pulse width (full width at half maximum, FWHM) and 30 mW average output power; this corresponds to the 29.7 kW maximum peak power and 2.5 nJ pulse energy obtained immediately from the oscillator. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America