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Optical microfiber-based ultrafast fiber lasers

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Abstract

Optical microfibers drawn from conventional fibers have attracted considerable interests and have found many novel applications. Here, we review recent advances in ultrafast fiber lasers based on optical microfibers. Starting with characteristics and fabrication of optical microfibers, which are closely related to ultrafast fiber lasers, we show that characteristics of large portion of evanescent field, tailorable dispersion, high optical nonlinearity, very low optical loss and full compatibility with conventional fibers are greatly beneficial to novel ultrafast fiber lasers. We then highlight recent works on ultrafast fiber lasers based on optical microfibers in terms of fast saturable absorbers made from optical microfiber-supported nanomaterials, dispersion management and high optical nonlinearity, as well as some other novel ultrafast fiber lasers. Finally, we briefly discuss future opportunities for optical microfiber-based ultrafast fiber lasers, such as high-order dispersion management, nonlinearity management and applications for sensing and measurement.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (11527901, 61475140, 61505096), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and Open Foundation of the State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Photonic Control Technology (Tsinghua University), Ministry of Education, Beijing, 100084, China

    Yuhang Li

  2. State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Yuhang Li

  3. State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Yuhang Li, Lizhen Wang, Linjun Li & Limin Tong

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  1. Yuhang Li
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  2. Lizhen Wang
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Correspondence to Yuhang Li or Limin Tong.

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This article is part of topical collection on Optical Nanofibers and Microresonators by Síle Nic Chormaic, Misha Sumetsky, Lan Yang.

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Li, Y., Wang, L., Li, L. et al. Optical microfiber-based ultrafast fiber lasers. Appl. Phys. B 125, 192 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-019-7303-z

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