Soliton Lasers

Optical solitons in fused quartz fibers can be utilized to achieve stable femtosecond pulses in broadband infrared lasers, such as the color-center laser or the Tiisapphire laser. Such a system is called a soliton laser [706-713]. Its experimental realization is shown in Fig. 6.41. 

With such a KC1 T1° color-center soliton laser, stable operation with pulse widths of 19 fs was demonstrated [712]. This corresponds at A = 1.5 pm to only four oscillation periods of the infrared wave. More about soliton lasers can be found in [706-714]. 

F.M. Mitschke, L.F. Mollenauer, Stabilizing the soliton laser. IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 22, 2242 (1986)... 

I.N. Duling III, All-fiber ring soliton laser mode locked with a nonlinear mirror. Opt. Lett. 16(8), 539 (1991) ... 

M.A. Arbore et al.. Frequency doubling of femtosecond erbium fiber soliton lasers in periodically poled lithium niobate. Opt. Lett. 22, 13 (1997)... 

Solid state lasers include lasers based on paramagnetic ions, organic dye molecules, and color centers in crystalline or amorphous hosts. Semiconductor lasers are included in this section because they are a solid-state device, although the nature of the active center—recombination of electrons and holes—is different from the dopants or defect centers used in other lasers in this category. Conjugated polymer lasers, solid-state excimer lasers, and fiber raman, Brillouin, and soliton lasers are also covered in this section. 

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