Abstract

The shortest pulses directly obtained by CPM dye lasers are in the range of 30 fs. To obtain even shorter pulses, propagation through nonlinear media in conjunction with pulse compression is normally applied, including chirping in single mode fibers [1,2,3] and continuum generation [2,3]. For the applications of these techniques previous amplification of the dye laser pulses is needed, necessitating the use of various pump lasers with exact synchronism. When additional amplification of the fs pulses is needed up to the µJ range, which evidently involves increased complexity, the minimum pulse duration is limited by the gain width of dyes to typically 10 - 20 fs.

© 1992 The Author(s)