Millijoule femtosecond all-fiber system

Summary form only given. We have demonstrated the first all-fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system producing millijoule-range ultrashort-pulses. Peak powers achieved of /spl sim/3 MW in a fiber amplifier are approximately two orders of magnitude higher compared to the previously reported case of mJ energies and > 100 ns long pulses from a Q-switched multimode fiber laser. Note that 400 ps stretching does not constitute a limit and /spl sim/1 ns stretched pulse durations are achievable with standard /spl sim/10 cm wide diffraction gratings. This indicates the straightforward possibility of further energy scaling with this fiber system. Also, the use of 1800 l/mm gratings will allow stretcher and compressor sizes to be significantly reduced. Furthermore, the robust fundamental-mode excitation and propagation properties of 50 /spl mu/m core fiber indicate that further core-size scaling is possible with potential for even higher pulse energies.