adiabatic soliton compression (original) (raw)
Definition: a pulse compression technique based on the adaptation of solitons to slowly varying propagation parameters
Categories: 
fiber optics and waveguides, 
light pulses
- pulse compression
- adiabatic soliton compression
- dispersive pulse compression
- nonlinear pulse compression
- soliton compression
Related: Soliton Pulses in a Fiber Amplifiersolitonslight pulsespulse compressiondispersion-decreasing fibers
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Principle of Adiabatic Soliton Compression
Adiabatic soliton compression is a technique for the temporal compression of ultrashort pulses in a fiber. The principle of operation is described in the following. For a fundamental soliton pulse in a fiber, the product of pulse energy and pulse duration is proportional to the group velocity dispersion divided by the nonlinearity of the fiber. Thus, the pulse duration must be reduced if the dispersion is reduced while keeping constant the pulse energy. Significant pulse compression can therefore be obtained by propagating the pulses through a dispersion-decreasing fiber. However, the following conditions must be satisfied:
- The initial pulses must fulfill the soliton condition at the input fiber end.
- The fiber dispersion must be varied sufficiently slowly to allow adiabatic adaptation of the pulses to the fiber parameters (otherwise, the pulses can become distorted). More precisely stated, the dispersion must not vary substantially over a length scale of a soliton period. As the latter scales with the square of the pulse duration, rather long fibers are required if the initial pulses are longer than e.g. 1 ps.
- The fiber dispersion must stay sufficiently constant over the whole spectral range of the compressed pulses. In other words, higher-order dispersion must be sufficiently weak. However, it has been shown that slightly normal dispersion in the wings of the generated pulse spectrum can be beneficial.
Interestingly, there are situations where Raman scattering and higher-order dispersion combine in such a way that the pulse compression stays adiabatic, even though each of the mentioned effects separately would lead to severe pulse distortion [5].
Even though the method is elegant and powerful, it suffers from the need to use a dispersion-decreasing fiber. The latter requirement is eliminated by a variant of the method, where the fiber has constant dispersion but contains a laser-active dopant which allows the amplification of the pulses. Here, an increasing pulse energy for constant dispersion also results in temporal compression.
Instead of using a dispersion-decreasing fiber, it is also possible to concatenate (splice) different fibers with different dispersion values. This may lead to more reproducible results, but as the dispersion does not vary continuously, the compression factor and/or the pulse quality can be compromised.
Generally, adiabatic soliton compression is limited to fairly low pulse energies, since the soliton energies of pulses in fibers cannot be made very high. Therefore, the technique is mainly applied to high repetition rate pulse trains, e.g. in the context of optical fiber communications.
Simulations on Pulse Compression
Explore, for example, how pulses evolve in somewhat non-adiabatic regimes. Only with a suitable simulator, you get complete insight and fully optimize performance. The RP Fiber Power software is an ideal tool for such work.
Frequently Asked Questions
This FAQ section was generated with AI based on the article content and has been reviewed by the article’s author (RP).
What is adiabatic soliton compression?
Adiabatic soliton compression is a technique for the temporal compression of ultrashort pulses. It involves propagating a soliton pulse through an optical fiber whose parameters, such as dispersion or gain, are slowly varied along its length.
How does a dispersion-decreasing fiber compress a soliton pulse?
For a fundamental soliton, the pulse duration is proportional to the fiber's group velocity dispersion. By gradually decreasing the dispersion along the fiber's length while keeping the pulse energy constant, the pulse is forced to reduce its duration.
What are the key requirements for successful adiabatic soliton compression?
The initial pulse must be a fundamental soliton, the fiber's dispersion must change very slowly (adiabatically) over a soliton period, and higher-order dispersion must be weak enough to not distort the pulse.
Are there alternatives to using a special dispersion-decreasing fiber?
Yes. One alternative is to amplify the soliton pulse in a fiber with constant dispersion, as the increasing pulse energy also causes compression. Another method is to splice together different fibers with successively lower dispersion values.
Why is adiabatic soliton compression limited to low pulse energies?
The technique relies on fundamental soliton propagation, and the energy of such solitons in optical fibers is inherently limited. This makes the method most suitable for high-repetition-rate pulse trains rather than high-energy pulse systems.
Suppliers
Sponsored content: The RP Photonics Buyer's Guide contains 25 suppliers for pulse compressors. Among them:
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Our pulse stretcher and compressor fiber Bragg gratings are used in chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) systems. They exhibit low insertion loss, allowing for high system efficiency. O/E Land Inc. offers both standard and custom-made pulse stretching and compression fiber Bragg grating products.
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We offer different add-on pulse compression modules (MIKSs) to spectrally broaden and temporally shorten the pulses from your picosecond or femtosecond laser. The modules are compatible with nearly all commercial ultrafast lasers. Pulse shortening factors of 5× to 10× are easily reachable in a single stage with over 90% transmission. The core of our technology is nonlinear spectral broadening in multipass cells. For example, MIKS1_S module shortens the input pulses with 200–400 fs pulse duration and 1–200 μJ energy down to <50 fs with extremely high transmission of over 90%. This module can be shipped to you and easily installed remotely.
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SAVANNA-HP, by UltraFast Innovations (UFI®), is a pulse compressor based on a stretched-flexible hollow-core fiber (SF-HCF). It has been developed in collaboration with the Institute for Nanophotonics in Göttingen. It spectrally broadens high-energy femtosecond input pulses by nonlinear interaction with a noble gas of adjustable gas pressure inside a hollow fiber and subsequently compresses the pulse using chirped mirror technology from UltraFast Innovations (UFI).
The state-of-the-art SF-HCF technique allows nearly ideal waveguiding, reducing the losses to a minimum and allowing the application of self-phase modulation over an interaction length of up to 8 m. It can handle extremely intense input pulses with a few tens of mJ pulses and an average power of up to 20 W — with active cooling, even up to several hundred watts. With this, we provide an unmatched compression unit for today's state-of-the-art lasers.
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Thorlabs manufactures a suite of options for dispersion management, including a pre-compensation module, dispersion compensating fiber, chirped mirrors, and low GDD optics. For ultrafast applications where dispersion must be well known and managed, Thorlabs’ portfolio includes a robust benchtop white light interferometer for characterizing reflective and transmissive dispersive properties of optics and coatings. Using two different detectors, the Chromatis™ dispersion measurement system is capable of measurements in the 500 — 1650 nm range, providing a means for measuring optics used for common femtosecond systems, including Ti:sapphire systems as well as 1 µm and 1550 nm oscillators. The Chromatis complements our ultrafast family of lasers, amplifiers, and specialized optics including nonlinear crystals, chirped mirrors, low GDD mirrors/beamsplitters, and dispersion compensating fiber.
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The APE femtoControl is a compact motorized dispersion compensation unit for compressing femtosecond laser pulses in the spectral range of Ti:sapphire lasers, as well as for 2P and 3P microscopy (options for e.g. 1300 nm, 1700 nm, and up to 2500 nm possible.
femtoControl compensates for material dispersion by applying the inverse amount of dispersion to the pulse. This is generated by a pair of prisms on motorized translation stages allowing continuous adjustment of the pulse length.
For example, femtoControl can help to achieve more crisp and clearer microscope images especially for multi-photon microscopy.
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The new few-cycle flexible hollow core fiber system allows you to choose various fiber lengths and inner diameters to achieve a desired nonlinear effect. Experimentally measured transmission for multi-mJ femtosecond pulses ranges between 50% and >90%, depending on the application.
The most versatile choice for laser pulse post compression: The few-cycle hollow core fiber supports input energies from 50 ÎĽJ to 100 mJ, up to 20 times compression and transmission >90% while keeping the footprint and optical path length at a minimum.
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FastLas is an incredible tool to change your standard ultra-short pulse laser into an exceptional very Ultra-Short Pulse (USP) with a pulse duration at the output of the system less than 50 fs.
- compatible with current USP lasers
- nonlinearity, broadening and compression is managed thanks to a gas filled fiber
- water cooling allows to shorten pulses at high energy
- responsive and efficient technical support for installation
The FastLas is equipped with a pre-alignment system to facilitate the installation and the injection of the customer’s laser signal into the FastLas.
âš™ hardware
Geola offers phase-conjugating cells which are suitable for pulse compressors achieving very high peak intensities. This is useful for applications like material processing, laser machining, and certain scientific experiments.
Bibliography
| [1] | H. H. Kuehl, “Solitons on an axially nonuniform optical fiber”, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 5 (3), 709 (1988); doi:10.1364/JOSAB.5.000709 |
|---|---|
| [2] | K. Smith and L. F. Mollenauer, “Experimental observation of adiabatic compression and expansion of soliton pulses over long fiber paths”, Opt. Lett. 14 (14), 751 (1989); doi:10.1364/OL.14.000751 |
| [3] | S. V. Chernikov and P. V. Mamyshev, “Femtosecond soliton propagation in fibers with slowly decreasing dispersion”, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 8 (8), 1633 (1991); doi:10.1364/JOSAB.8.001633 |
| [4] | S. V. Chernikov et al., “Picosecond soliton pulse compressor based on dispersion decreasing fiber”, Electron. Lett. 28, 1842 (1992); doi:10.1049/el:19921175 |
| [5] | P. V. Mamyshev et al., “Adiabatic compression of Schrödinger solitons due to the combined perturbations of higher-order dispersion and delayed nonlinear response”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 71 (1), 73 (1993); doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.73 |
| [6] | S. V. Chernikov et al., “Soliton pulse compression in dispersion-decreasing fiber”, Opt. Lett. 18 (7), 476 (1993); doi:10.1364/OL.18.000476 |
| [7] | M. L. Quiroga-Teixeiro et al., “Efficient soliton compression by fast adiabatic amplification”, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 13 (4), 687 (1996); doi:10.1364/JOSAB.13.000687 |
| [8] | K. Mori et al., “Flatly broadened supercontinuum spectrum generated in a dispersion decreasing fiber with convex dispersion profile”, Electron. Lett. 33, 1806 (1997); doi:10.1049/el:19971184 |
| [9] | A. Mostofi et al., “Optimum dispersion profile for compression of fundamental solitons in dispersion decreasing fibers”, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 33 (4), 620 (1997); doi:10.1109/3.563391 |
| [10] | K. R. Tamura and M. Nakazawa, “54-fs, 10-GHz soliton generation from a polarization-maintaining dispersion-flattened dispersion-decreasing fiber pulse compressor”, Opt. Lett. 26 (11), 762 (2001); doi:10.1364/OL.26.000762 |
| [11] | F. K. Fatemi, “Analysis of nonadiabatically compressed pulses from dispersion-decreasing fiber”, Opt. Lett. 27 (18), 1637 (2002); doi:10.1364/OL.27.001637 |
| [12] | M. L. V. Tse et al., “Pulse compression at 1.06 μm in dispersion-decreasing holey fibers”, Opt. Lett. 31 (23), 3504 (2006); doi:10.1364/OL.31.003504 |
| [13] | J. Lægsgaard and P. J. Roberts, “Theory of adiabatic pressure-gradient soliton compression in hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers”, Opt. Lett. 34 (23), 3710 (2009); doi:10.1364/OL.34.003710 |
| [14] | Z Y. Huang et al., “Ionization-induced adiabatic soliton compression in gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibers”, Opt. Lett. 44 (22), 5562 (2019); doi:10.1364/OL.44.005562 |
(Suggest additional literature!)
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