Compact ultra-short pulse source amplifiers

An optical amplification system, comprising:

• a fiber laser seed source producing seed pulses at a repetition rate corresponding to the fiber laser cavity round trip time;
• a nonlinear pulse transformer, said pulse transformer receiving picosecond (ps) pulses at its input and producing a spectrally broadened ps output pulse at its output, said ps output pulse having a spectral bandwidth which is more than 1.5 times a spectral bandwidth of a ps seed pulse;
• a fiber power amplifier which receives and amplifies said spectrally broadened pulse to produce a pulse energy greater than about 5 μJ;
• and
• a pulse compressor configured to temporally compress spectrally broadened pulses amplified by said power amplifier.

An optical amplification system, comprising:

• a fiber laser seed source producing seed pulses at a repetition rate corresponding to the fiber laser cavity round trip time, said seed source producing seed pulses having a pulse width greater than about 5 ps;
• A fiber amplifier receiving and amplifying pulses produced with said fiber seed laser;
• and
• a nonlinear frequency down-conversion stage disposed downstream from said fiber amplifier.

An amplification system, comprising:

• a ps noise seed source, said noise seed source producing incoherent or partially coherent pulses with a pulse width greater than about 10 ps;
• a nonlinear pulse transformer, said pulse transformer receiving a ps pulse at its input and producing a spectrally broadened ps pulse at its output;
• a nonlinear fiber power amplifier;
• and
• a compressor configured to temporally compress spectrally broadened pulses amplified by said nonlinear power amplifier.

An amplification system comprising:

• a fiber oscillator generating pulses at its cavity round trip time;
• a fiber amplifier;
• a down-counter, said down-counter disposed between said fiber oscillator and said fiber amplifier;
• and
• a pump source configured to optically pump both said fiber oscillator and said fiber amplifier.

A modelocked fiber oscillator generating ps pulses, said modelocked fiber oscillator comprising:

• a fiber grating;
• and
• a saturable absorber,
• wherein said modelocked fiber oscillator is characterized by having a low susceptibility to Q-switching instabilities, said low susceptibility to Q-switching instabilities arising from selecting a certain grating bandwidth Δλ[nm] and negative grating dispersion Dgrat[ps2], where the grating bandwidth Δλ[nm] is selected to be smaller than 5/√{square root over (Dgrat[ps2])}.

A system for amplifying pulses, comprising

• a picosecond (ps) seed source, said seed source producing pulses with a pulse width greater than about 5 ps;
• a nonlinear pulse transformer, said pulse transformer receiving a ps pulse at its input and producing a spectrally broadened, near linearly chirped and near parabolic ps output pulse, said ps output pulse having a temporal waveform with substantially smaller pulse wings compared to a seed input pulse waveform;
• a nonlinear fiber power amplifier;
• and
• a pulse compressor configured to temporally compress pulses amplified by said nonlinear power amplifier.

A system for amplifying pulses, comprising

• a picosecond (ps) seed source, said seed source producing pulses with a pulse width greater than about 5 ps;
• a nonlinear pulse transformer, said pulse transformer receiving a ps pulse at its input and producing a spectrally broadened ps pulse at its output;
• a nonlinear fiber power amplifier;
• and
• a pulse compressor configured to temporally compress pulses amplified by said power amplifier,
• wherein said nonlinear pulse transformer is configured to substantially optimize the pulse quality obtained after the compressor.