Efficient source of femtosecond pulses and its use for broadband supercontinuum generation

A femtosecond Er{sup 3+}-doped fibre laser system is developed and studied. The system contains a master oscillator operating in the pulse stretching regime, an amplifier of chirped pulses, and a device for pulse compression. The laser emits 1.55-{mu}m, 100-fs, 90-mW pulses with a pulse repetition rate of 25 MHz. The setup was used for supercontinuum generation in an optical fibre heavily doped with GeO{sub 2}. The width of the generated supercontinuum was close to an octave. (lasers)