Optimization of tapered large mode area fiber for compression of high peak power ultrashort pulses

Abstract

Ultra-short pulses of high peak power are useful in many applications such as spectroscopy, laser ablation, remote sensing and medical treatment [1]. The optical pulse compression is an attractive technique to generate ultrashort pulses by compression of short pulses using specially designed nonlinear fiber. Pulse compression is the consequence of interaction between self-phase modulation (SPM) and group velocity dispersion (GVD). An axially varying fiber is an interesting approach to achieve pulse compression through a short length of the fiber [2]. In this paper, we optimize tapering ratio of a large mode area (LMA) fiber to compress a 250 fs pulse to a pulse of 13 fs. We find that the maximum compression of the pulse is achieved with tapering ratio of 0.65 over 35 cm length of the fiber. © 2018 OSA - The Optical Society. All rights reserved.