Abstract

Thulium (Tm)-doped fiber lasers are attractive light sources to generate ultrashort pulses around 2 μm wavelength region, which can be used for a number of application such as remote sensing, micro-machining, and mid-infrared generation. In fact, watt-level, femtosecond pulses are demonstrated by Tm-fiber-based master oscillator power amplifier systems [1]. Even shorter pulses are generated by utilizing nonlinear effects within fibers [2],[3]. Here we demonstrate a laser system based on Tm-doped fibers that generates 50 fs pulses at the average power of 2.4 W. This is the shortest pulse generated from watt-class Tm-doped fiber laser systems to our knowledge. The system utilizes fibers made of ZBLAN glass, which has many distinct optical properties such as high transmission and low dispersion, and high lasing efficiency [4].

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