Phase-matching-induced near-chirp-free solitons in normal-dispersion fiber lasers

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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

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en

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Light-Science & Applications, Volume 11, issue 1

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Direct generation of chirp-free solitons without external compression in normal-dispersion fiber lasers is a long-term challenge in ultrafast optics. We demonstrate near-chirp-free solitons with distinct spectral sidebands in normal-dispersion hybrid-structure fiber lasers containing a few meters of polarization-maintaining fiber. The bandwidth and duration of the typical mode-locked pulse are 0.74 nm and 1.95 ps, respectively, giving the time-bandwidth product of 0.41 and confirming the near-chirp-free property. Numerical results and theoretical analyses fully reproduce and interpret the experimental observations, and show that the fiber birefringence, normal-dispersion, and nonlinear effect follow a phase-matching principle, enabling the formation of the near-chirp-free soliton. Specifically, the phase-matching effect confines the spectrum broadened by self-phase modulation and the saturable absorption effect slims the pulse stretched by normal dispersion. Such pulse is termed as birefringence-managed soliton because its two orthogonal-polarized components propagate in an unsymmetrical “X” manner inside the polarization-maintaining fiber, partially compensating the group delay difference induced by the chromatic dispersion and resulting in the self-consistent evolution. The property and formation mechanism of birefringence-managed soliton fundamentally differ from other types of pulses in mode-locked fiber lasers, which will open new research branches in laser physics, soliton mathematics, and their related applications.

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Funding Information: This work was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China under Grant No. 2017YFA0303800; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 11874300; 11634010; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant No. 3102019JC008, 3102019PY002; and the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province under Grant No. 2019JQ-447. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).

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Mao, D, He, Z, Zhang, Y, Du, Y, Zeng, C, Yun, L, Luo, Z, Li, T, Sun, Z & Zhao, J 2022, 'Phase-matching-induced near-chirp-free solitons in normal-dispersion fiber lasers', Light-Science & Applications, vol. 11, no. 1, 25. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-022-00713-y