A microstructured optical fiber for generating supercontinuum light. The optical fiber includes a core and a cladding region surrounding the core. The optical fiber includes a first fiber length section, a second fiber length section as well as an intermediate fiber length section between said first and second fiber length sections. The first fiber length section has a core with a first characteristic core diameter larger than about 7 ?m. The second fiber length section has a core with a second characteristic core diameter, smaller than said first characteristic core diameter. The intermediate length section of the optical fiber includes a core which is tapered from said first characteristic core diameter to the second characteristic core diameter over a tapered length. Also, a supercontinuum light source including an optical fiber and a pump light source.

A single mode fiber pulsed oscillator includes an all normal dispersion ring cavity provided with a mode-locking fiber loop component and a giant chirp generating fiber component. The mode-locking fiber loop component is configured with a hybrid of NOLM and NALM configurations which is operative to induce a first phase acquisition of a spectrally narrow pulse due to SPM. The giant chirp generating fiber loop component is configured to induce the additional phase acquisition to the pulse broadened in the mode-locking fiber component so as to generate a pulse with a giant chirp. The fiber loop components each include a fiber amplifier and a coil of fiber. The amplifiers each are configured with an active fiber provided with a core which supports multiple transverse mode in a range of wavelength except for the desired wavelength at which the core is configured to support a single fundamental mode.

Provided is a light source device including a fiber laser, an amplifier, and a nonlinear fiber. Group delay dispersions D1 and D2 are a positive value, the light velocity in a vacuum is denoted as c, a spectral full width at half maximum of the pulse light is denoted as , the center wavelength of the pulse light is denoted as , a coefficient based on a shape of the pulse light is denoted as a, a value of the spectral full width at half maximum at which a function T(): $T\left(\right)=\left(\frac{a{}^2}{c}\right)\sqrt{1+{\left[\left(D1+D2\right){\left(\frac{c}{a{}^2}\right)}^2\right]}^2}$
is the minimum is denoted as _min, and at which a change amount of T()

An optical resonator (100) comprises an optical waveguide device (10) having an optical axis (OA) and extending with a longitudinal length between two waveguide end facets (11), resonator mirrors (13) being arranged for enclosing a resonator section (14) of the optical waveguide device (10), and a ferrule (20) having two ferrule facets (21), wherein the optical waveguide device (10) is mounted to the ferrule (20) and the ferrule (20) extends along the full longitudinal length of optical waveguide device (10). Furthermore, an optical apparatus (200) including the optical resonator (100) and a method of manufacturing the optical resonator (100) are described.

A femtosecond laser source includes an injection laser oscillator with an optical fiber doped with a given material, suitable for delivering, via an output optical fiber, a first picosecond pulse, at a first wavelength .sub.1; a power amplifier with an amplifying optical fiber for producing, from the first pulse, a second pulse at the first wavelength, with an energy that is amplified relative to the first pulse, the amplifying optical fiber being doped with the same material as the optical fiber of the injection oscillator and having a length less than or equal to the distance from the point of soliton compression and greater than the distance from which the amplifying optical fiber operates in non-linear mode; a fiber with a frequency shift suitable for receiving the second pulse and generating, by Raman self-shifting, a fundamental soliton at a second wavelength .sub.2 that is strictly greater than the first wavelength .sub.1.

A bulk compressor for use in a chirped pulse amplification system (CPA) comprising a tunable pulse stretcher and an amplifier is provided. The bulk compressor includes a mounting block formed as a monolithic structure and made of solid material. The mounting block may define a plurality of mounting surfaces each forming a collar surrounding a light passage. Optical components are mounted on the mounting block in a fixed mutual spatial relationship, each optical component having a front face having a peripheral portion mounted in direct contact with the collar formed by a respective one of the mounting surfaces. The bulk compressor may be provided as a stand-alone component, a part of a stretcher-compressor pair or a full CPA system, and may be used in a method for amplifying input optical pulses.

Optical soliton pulses are generated using a drive unit to provide pump light at a drive power, a passive optical waveguide ring resonator, a spectral filter in the passive optical waveguide ring resonator, and an output to optically couple optical solitons from the passive optical waveguide ring resonator. The drive power, a net group velocity dispersion (GVD) of the passive optical waveguide ring resonator, a frequency detuning parameter of the passive optical waveguide ring resonator, and the spectral filter are configured to generate one or more optical solitons.

A novel broadband light source composed of supercontinuum light source and high-power single-wavelength semiconductor laser diodes. It includes an electronics control board, a supercontinuum light source, and a series of single-wavelength semiconductor laser diodes. The frequency of each single-wavelength semiconductor laser diodes is adjusted to integer times or division times of a frequency of the supercontinuum light source by using the electronics control board. Weaknesses of the supercontinuum light source that it is difficult to cover a wavelength less than 400 nm and power density at a wavelength of 400-2400 nm is less than 10 mW/nm are compensated by using the single-wavelength semiconductor lasers. Wavelengths of the single-wavelength semiconductor laser diodes can cover 375-2400 nm, and the highest power density can reach 200 mW/nm, so that the novel broadband light source composed by the single-wavelength semiconductor laser diodes is applicable to a field such as spectral microscopy in a range of 375-400 nm. In addition, by means of electronics clock control on the single-wavelength semiconductor laser diodes and a pulse generation circuit of the supercontinuum light source, same-phase output of the single-wavelength semiconductor laser diodes and the supercontinuum light source can be kept, and relative pulse delays are flexible and adjustable.

The invention describes classes of robust fiber laser systems usable as pulse sources for Nd: or Yb: based regenerative amplifiers intended for industrial settings. The invention modifies adapts and incorporates several recent advances in FCPA systems to use as the input source for this new class of regenerative amplifier.

The invention relates to a microstructured optical fiber for generating supercontinuum light upon feeding of pump light. The light can be incoherent light. The microstructured optical fiber has a first section and a second section, where the first and second sections have one or more different features. The invention also relates to a supercontinuum source comprising a microstructured optical fiber according to the invention.