16 Femtosecond Optical Pulses Obtained by Two-Stage Compression of a Synchronously-Pumped Dye Laser

Abstract

In the past few years, several laboratories have used the optical fiber pulse compressor1 to compress the output of colliding pulse mode-locked ring dye lasers (CPM lasers) to obtain record setting ultrashort pulses.2–5 All of these pulses, however, suffer from the non-tunability of the CPM laser which limits the utility of these pulses for the study of many time-dependent processes. In order to generate tunable, ultrashort pulses, we have taken the alternative approach of compressing the output of a commercial synchronously-pumped mode-locked dye laser. To do this we. have used two stages of optical fiber pulse compression with amplification before the second stage. Using this technique we have obtained pulses as short as 16 fsec. © 1985 Optical Society of America