Open AccessResonant nonlinearity in high-energy Er3+-fiber chirped-pulse-amplifiers
Author(s) -
P. Adel,
Martin Engelbrecht,
Dieter Wandt,
Carsten Fallnich
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/opex.13.010260
Subject(s) - chirped pulse amplification , optics , bandwidth limited pulse , materials science , chirp , erbium , pulse (music) , amplified spontaneous emission , pulse duration , femtosecond , ultrashort pulse , amplifier , dispersion (optics) , femtosecond pulse shaping , self phase modulation , nonlinear optics , physics , optoelectronics , laser , cmos , detector
We present experimental results, which show that the up-chirp of dispersively stretched femtosecond pulses decreases linearly with increasing pulse energy after amplification in Erbium-doped fibers. For 6 microJ output pulses a nonlinear dispersion of -410(6) fs(2) was measured. This nonlinear dispersive effect is attributable to the resonant dispersion of the Erbium-ions and the decrease of the inversion during pulse amplification and was about one order of magnitude larger than predicted by the literature. Most likely this deviation is attributable to the complex population dynamics of the Er3+-ions during pulse amplification, since in the literature the relation between the refractive index and Er3+-inversion was described for a quasi-static population distribution. Due to the high resonant dispersion the required compressor dispersion for minimum output pulse duration depends strongly on the output pulse energy in Erbium-doped fiber-based chirped-pulse-amplifier set-ups.