Patent ID: 9219344
Filing Date: 2015-12-22
Classification: G02F,H01S

Abstract:
1. A method for generating ultrashort laser pulses by separating a nonlinear processing of laser pulses via nonlinear self-phase modulation (SPM) in a nonlinear optical medium from a subsequent linear processing of the laser pulses to achieve ultrashort laser pulses, comprising: directing input laser pulses into a nonlinear optical processing module to have an optical intensity that reaches at or above an intensity threshold for SPM in the nonlinear optical processing module to cause spectral broadening of, and an amount of frequency chirp in, each of the laser pulses due to the nonlinear SPM; configuring a length of optical propagation of the linear optical processing module to cause an amount of anomalous optical dispersion in the spectrally broadened laser pulses that compensates for the frequency chirp produced by the nonlinear optical processing module and causes compression of a pulse width in time to produce output laser pulses that are spectrally broadened, and are compressed in the pulse duration in time with respect to a spectral width and a pulse duration of the input laser pulses; operating a seed laser to generate seed laser pulses; stretching a pulse duration of the seed laser pulses to produce stretched seed laser pulses; amplifying optical power of the stretched seed laser pulses; compressing a pulse duration of the amplified stretched seed laser pulses to produce the input laser pulses which are further processed by the nonlinear optical processing module and the linear optical processing module to produce the output laser pulses; using a reflective chirped fiber Bragg grating to receive and reflect the amplified stretched seed laser pulses to compress the pulse duration in generating the input laser pulses; and suppressing heat generated by a third-order harmonic generation in the reflective chirped fiber Bragg grating.