ABSTRACT
As ultrafast laser technology has begun to be deployed in industrial applications, the availability of commercial ultrafast lasers has greatly proliferated. The most widely used ultrafast laser systems in the market are based mainly on modelocked bulk solid-state and fiber lasers, with a bias toward bulk Ti:sapphire and erbium (Er) fiber oscillators, respectively. Indeed, several companies offer commercial hands-off oscillators based on these systems that promise a level of unprecedented reliability for any potential customer. The preference for the above two lasers arises from their favorable material properties, such as wide bandwidth and superior thermal properties for the case of Ti:sapphire. Erbium fiber lasers, on the other hand, can be pumped by telecom-compatible pump diodes, do not require any water cooling, and allow for straightforward excitation of soliton pulses using standard optical fibers. Moreover, when operating at Er fibercompatible wavelengths, nonlinear pulse compression techniques in standard fibers can be employed to produce ultrashort femtosecond pulses without resorting to any actual ultrafast oscillators, i.e., by appropriately shaping an initial small perturbation from a continuous-wave (cw) signal.
