Simple and cost-effective broad bandwidth fiber chirped pulse amplification laser system seeded by a nonlinear amplifier

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate a simple and cost-effective fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser system, where a nonlinear amplifier is employed to generate broadband seeding pulses. The nonlinear amplifier can generate stable pulses with 50 nm spectral bandwidth and linear chirp. With such a seeding configuration being adapted into a fiber CPA laser system, the output bandwidth can be expanded from 7 nm to 20 nm, with only minor changes to a standard industrial fiber CPA system. The increased bandwidth allows for pulse durations of less than 100 fs, which is significantly shorter than the original configuration’s 250 fs. When combined with a Fourier pulse shaper, such a fiber laser system is expected to produce pulses with energy exceeding 100 µJ and duration shorter than 100 fs.