Optical pulse doublet resulting from the nonlinear splitting of a super-Gaussian pulse

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how a super-Gaussian pulse propagates through a nonlinear medium to produce a doublet pulse, with detailed characterization and potential for high repetition rate applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel fiber-based method for generating pulse doublets from super-Gaussian pulses with high efficiency and temporal compression.

Findings

Pulse doublet observed experimentally

Close-to-Gaussian Fourier-transform limited shape achieved

Temporal compression factors around 10 demonstrated

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate the generation of a temporal pulse doublet from the propagation of an initial super-Gaussian waveform in a nonlinear focusing medium. The picosecond structures are characterized both in amplitude and phase and their close-to-Gaussian Fourier-transform limited shape is found in excellent agreement with numerical simulations. This nonlinear fiber-based single-stage reshaping scheme is energy efficient, can sustain GHz repetition rates and temporal compression factors around 10 are demonstrated.