Abstract

The recent demonstration of rare earth doped fiber lasers with a continuous wave output power approaching the 10 kW level with diffraction limited beam quality has proven that fiber lasers constitute a power scalable solid state laser concept. To generate intense pulses from a fiber several fundamental limitations have to be overcome. Nevertheless, novel experimental strategies and fiber designs offer an enormous potential towards ultrafast laser systems with high average powers (>kW) and high peak power (>GW). The challenges, achievements and perspectives of ultrashort pulse generation and amplification in fibers will be reviewed.

© 2011 Optical Society of America