Patent ID: 6996136

Claim:
An ultrashort-pulse laser comprising: a dispersion-managed cavity having fibers which control and change the duration and bandwidth of an optical pulse as it propagates within the cavity driven by an external source and actively length stabilized, said dispersion managed cavity also including: a first branch of polarization-maintaining (PM) optical fiber forming a first loop; an optical modulator in optical communication with said fibers; a second branch of non-polarization maintaining optical fiber forming a birefringence-compensating section and connected to said first branch by a polarizing beamsplitter, said non-polarization-maintaining optical fiber wound onto a piezoelectric cylinder for controlling the length of the optical fiber, and a Faraday mirror for transforming light into an orthogonal state; the polarizing beamsplitter connected between said first branch and second branch for injecting linearly polarized optical energy into the second branch, said dispersion managed cavity increasing the signal-to-noise ratio of the propagating pulses and increasing the stability of the propagating pulses.