Abstract

The generation of subpicosecond pulses with a figure-of-eight laser configuration has received much attention in recent years [ 1 ]. Most of these schemes utilise the soliton behaviour of the pulses in the anomalous dispersion regime to form the pulses. The fixed energy of the soldons leads to the generation of many pulses in the cavity at one time at pump powers well above threshold [2]. There is thus no passive mechanism which ensures a stable repetition rate in a standard figure of eight design. Recently, polarization based additive pulse modelocking (APM) has achieved self starting modelocked operation for a ring cavity [3].

© 1996 Optical Society of America