Chirped-pulse oscillators: theory and experiment

Theory of chirped-pulse oscillators operating in the positive dispersion regime is presented. It is found that the chirped pulses can be described analytically as solitary pulse solutions of the nonlinear cubic-quintic complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. Due to the closed form of the solution, basic characteristics of the regime under consideration are easily traceable. Numerical simulations validate the analytical technique and the chirped-pulse stability. Experiments with 10 MHz Ti:Sa oscillator providing up to 150 nJ chirped pulses, which are compressible down to 30 fs, are in agreement with the theory.