Pulse configurable fiber laser unit

A pulse configurable laser unit (PCLU) outputting uniform ultrashort pulses, comprising:

• a fiber pulse generator operating in a plurality of operational regimes to output a train of coherent uniform amplified giant chirped broadband pulses along a light path, the fiber pulse generator being a self-starting passively mode-locked fiber seed which has two identical groups of optical elements defining a ring resonator;
• a two-stage compressor including
• a static compressor, which is configured to compensate for a linear chirp component of each giant chirped broadband pulse, and
• a pulse shaper which is provided with a programmable spatial light modulator (SLM) to correct for a non-linear chirp component of the giant chirped broadband pulse, wherein the two-stage compressor outputs a train of transform limited (TL) ultrashort coherent pulses in each of the operational regimes of the fiber pulse laser generator;
• and
• at least one or more computers executing a software for selectively retrieving a phase mask corresponding to a given operational regime from a library of phase masks, which is stored in a memory of the CPU, and operating the pulse shaper to apply the retrieved mask across to the programmable spatial light modulator (SLM) of the pulse shaper so as to compensate for the nonlinear chirp component of each giant chirped pulse.