Patent ID: 9368932
Filing Date: 2016-06-14
CPC Classification: H01S

Claim Text:
1. A method for amplifying laser pulses, comprising: modifying a train of input laser pulses at an input pulse repetition rate to stretch a pulse duration of each input laser pulse to produce a train of stretched laser pulses; directing the train of stretched laser pulses into an optical power amplifier to amplify the stretched laser pulses; guiding the stretched laser pulses that are amplified by the optical power amplifier through an input optical path; coupling the stretched laser pulses that are amplified by the optical power amplifier from the input optical path into a chirped fiber Bragg grating configured as a pulse compressor, to obtain reflected optical pulses from the chirped fiber Bragg grating with compressed pulse durations, wherein the chirped fiber Bragg grating is configured to exhibit a high reflectivity greater than 90% so that the reflected optical pulses have a high peak pulse power to a high self-phase modulation which generates a new spectral content that interacts with anomoulus dispersion of the chirped fiber Bragg grating to compress each reflected optical pulse; and directing the reflected optical pulses from the chirped fiber Bragg grating with compressed pulse durations along an output optical path in free space, without going through fiber, to produce amplified output laser pulses with compressed pulse durations.