Coherent Tm-fiber Raman-soliton amplifier

The molecular fingerprint region from 2 – 10 °m is currently receiving a lot of interest due to its potential for enabling the identification of many important molecules in biological and medical applications. Particularly mid-IR comb laser systems are highly sought, since they could potentially revolutionize mid-IR and far IR spectroscopy. However, to date no robust comb technology operating in the 2 µm spectral region has been available. Tm fiber lasers have been known as versatile sub ps sources for the 2 µm spectral region for a long time, but their application to comb technology has been hampered by the long pulses generated by even the best Tm oscillators, i.e. to date the shortest pulses generated from Tm fiber oscillators were around 173 fs [1].