High-order soliton pulse compression and splitting at 1.32 µm in a single-mode optical fiber

The optically compressed pulses from a CW mode-locked Nd:YAG laser operating at 1.32 μm have been further compressed through a high-order soliton generation effect in a 40 m length of single-mode dispersion-shifted optical fiber. Two- and three-fold splitting of the soliton pulses have been demonstrated. Experimental compression factors and spectra for
N = 3, 5, 7, 9, 11
, and 13 solitons have been shown to agree qualitatively with theory. In shorter fiber lengths pulses as short as 33 fs have been generated, corresponding to an over-all compression factor of X2700, the largest reported so far.