Abstract

Rapid advances have taken place in the compression of optical pulses using self phase modulation. Following the first compression of femtosecond pulses to 30 femtoseconds by Shank et al.,¹ Fujimoto et al.² improved upon these results to compress a 70 femtosecond optical pulse to 16 femtoseconds. Shortly after that report, Halbout and Grischkowsky³ compressed a single pulse embedded in a comb of amplified pulses at a repetition rate of 500 Hz. Compression from 110 femtoseconds to 12 femtoseconds was reported. We report the compression of single amplified 40 femtosecond optical pulses to a duration of less than 8 femtoseconds at a repetition rate of 5 kHz. This pulse has a full width half maximum corresponding to 3.8 optical periods.

© 1985 Optical Society of America