Dispersion engineering of mode-locked fibre lasers

TL;DR

This paper reviews how dispersion engineering in mode-locked fibre lasers enables various stable ultrashort pulse regimes, highlighting recent advances, modeling insights, and future scaling opportunities.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of steady-state pulse dynamics achieved through cavity dispersion engineering, including new regimes and stabilization mechanisms.

Findings

Different pulse regimes characterized and stabilized by dispersion management

Numerical models support understanding of pulse dynamics

Discussion of future pulse energy scaling and recent technological advances

Abstract

Mode-locked fibre lasers are important sources of ultrashort pulses, where stable pulse generation is achieved through a balance of periodic amplitude and phase evolutions. A range of distinct cavity pulse dynamics have been revealed, arising from the interplay between dispersion and nonlinearity in addition to dissipative processes such as filtering. This has led to the discovery of numerous novel operating regimes, offering significantly improved laser performance. In this Topical Review, we summarise the main steady-state pulse dynamics reported to date through cavity dispersion engineering, including average solitons, dispersion-managed solitons, dissipative solitons, giant-chirped pulses and similaritons. Characteristic features and the stabilisation mechanism of each regime are described, supported by numerical modelling, in addition to the typical performance and limitations. Opportunities for further pulse energy scaling are discussed, in addition to considering other recent advances including automated self-tuning cavities and fluoride-fibre-based mid-infrared mode-locked lasers.