Wave-breaking often occurs when a short intense optical pulse propagates in a long normally dispersive optical fiber. This effect has conventionally been avoided in fiber (super-)continuum-based pulse compression because the accumulated frequency chirp of the output pulse cannot be fully compensated by a standard prism (or grating) pair. Thus, the spectral extending capability of the wave-break...

We report on remote delivery of 25 pJ broadband nearinfrared femtosecond light pulses from a Ti:sapphire laser through 150 meters of single-mode optical fiber. Pulse distortion due to dispersion is overcome with precompensation using adaptive pulse shaping techniques, while nonlinearities are mitigated using an SF10 rod for the final stage of pulse compression. Near transform limited pulse dura...

We demonstrate almost chirpand pedestal-free optical pulse compression in a nonlinear fiber Bragg grating with exponentially decreasing dispersion. The exponential dispersion profile can be well-approximated by a few gratings with different constant dispersions. The required number of sections is proportional to the compression ratio, but inversely proportional to the initial chirp value. We pr...

As lasers become progressively higher in power, optical damage thresholds will become a limiting factor. Using the nonlinear optics of plasma may be a way to circumvent these limits. Here, we present a new self-compression mechanism for high-power, femtosecond laser pulses based on geometrical focusing and three dimensional spatiotemporal reshaping in an ionizing plasma. By propagating tightly ...

Non-adiabatic pulse compression of cascaded higher-order optical soliton is investigated. We demonstrate high degree compression of pulses with soliton orders N=2, 3, 4, and 5 in two or three nonlinear fibers with different second-order dispersion coefficients. Each fiber length is shorter than half of its soliton period. This compression technique has significant advantages over the widely rep...

We demonstrate efficient spectral compression of picosecond pulses in an all-fiber configuration at telecommunication wavelengths. Thanks to parabolic pulse shaping, a spectral compression by a factor 12 is achieved with an enhanced Strehl ratio. OCIS codes: 190.4370 (nonlinear optics, fibers), 320.5540 (pulse shaping), 070.4340 (optical signal processing)

We study soliton pulse compression in materials with cascaded quadratic nonlinearities and show that the group-velocity mismatch creates two different temporally nonlocal regimes. They correspond to what is known as the stationary and nonstationary regimes. The theory accurately predicts the transition to the stationary regime, where highly efficient pulse compression is possible. c © 2014 Opti...