1100x Optical fiber pulse compression using grating pair and soliton effect at 1.319microns.

We report the first demonstration of two-stage optical fiber pulse compression using grating-pair technique and, successively, soliton effect. Firstly, 100-psec pulses from a mode-locked Nd: YAG laser operated at 1.319 microns are chirped by a 2- km positive-dispersion fiber (zero-dispersion wavelength lambda (omicron) = 1.59 microns), and compressed into 2-psec pulses by a grating pair. Subsequently, the resultant 2-psec pulses are coupled into a 40-m negative-dispersion fiber (lambda(omicron) = 1.275 microns) and compressed further into 90-fsec pulses via pulse narrowing effect of high-order soliton propagation. The combined compression factor of 1100 is the largest reported to date using optical fibers.