Abstract

Ultrashort fiber pulse sources based on Kerr-type passive mode locking are currently the subject of an intense research effort¹ since they can be assembled with standard fiber components and offer the possibility of producing pulses at the bandwidth limit of rare-earth fiber lasers² with gigahertz repetition rates.³ However, any practical fiber-based ultrashort pulse source must be environmentally stable; this is just the requirement that most of the various suggested cavity designs fail to fulfill so far.

© 1994 Optical Society of America