Intermediate asymptotic evolution and photonic bandgap fibre compression of optical similaritons around 1550 nm

In this paper, we report the first complete characterization of the self-similar generation of optical similaritons, using high dynamic range ultrashort pulse metrology to study the intermediate asymptotic evolution towards the parabolic pulse profile, and to optimize additional propagation in highly-nonlinear fiber and compression to the sub-100 fs regime in hollow-core bandgap-guiding photonic crystal fiber (PCF). Our similariton amplifier used normally dispersive (Dap-40 ps/nm-km) Er3+ fiber with a 140 mW 1480 nm pump and 80 pJ, 1.1 ps sech2 input pulses at 1550 nm