Patent ID: 8107161

Claim:
A fiber amplifier system, comprising: a source of optical pulses; a pulse stretcher connected to said source for receiving said pulses and generating a plurality of broadened optical pulses; a fiber amplifier connected to said pulse stretcher for receiving said broadened optical pulses from said pulse stretcher and generating a plurality of amplified pulses, said fiber amplifier having a gain that is adjustable to introduce a controllable amount of nonlinear phase shift to said amplified pulses; and, a pulse compressor connected to said fiber amplifier for receiving said amplified pulses received from said fiber amplifier and generating a plurality of compressed amplified pulses; wherein, said pulse stretcher and said pulse compressor are selected to have dispersion characteristics that are mismatched with one another to thereby introduce an amount of third order dispersion into the system and said gain of said fiber amplifier is selected to introduce an amount of nonlinear phase shift having a magnitude of at least π to said amplified pulses which compensates for said amount of third order dispersion to thereby produce pulses of short duration and high peak power.