Patent ID: 8503069

Claim:
A fiber chirped pulse amplification system, comprising; a source of optical pulses; a pulse stretcher connected to said source for receiving said pulses and generating temporally stretched pulses; a fiber amplifier connected to said pulse stretcher for receiving said temporally stretched pulses from said pulse stretcher and amplifying said pulses; a pulse compressor connected to said fiber amplifier for receiving said amplified pulses and temporally compressing said amplified pulses; wherein, said pulse stretcher and said pulse compressor are selected to have at least non-compensated values of third-order dispersion; said fiber amplifier further introducing an amount of nonlinear phase shift to a pulse as it travels through said system, said non-compensated values of third-order dispersion and nonlinear phase shift being sufficient to compensate at least partially for one another and thereby producing pulses of shortened duration and increased peak power.