A method for fabrication of a new type of optical fiber with dispersion varying along the fiber length is described. The main optical parameters of a drawn fiber are theoretically studied and experimentally measured. These fibers are of great interest for nonlinear fiber optics. Such applications of the fibers, such as high-quality soliton pulse compression, soliton pulsewidth stabilization through compensation of losses, and generation of a high-repetition-rate train of practically uninteracting solitons, are considered.

We describe the design and characterization of solid core large mode area bandgap fibers exhibiting low propagation loss and low bend loss. The fibers have been prepared by modified chemical vapor deposition process. The bandgap guidance obtained thanks to a 3-bilayer periodic cladding is assisted by a very slight index step (5.10-4) in the solid core. The propagation loss reaches a few dB/km and is found to be close to material loss.

Heavily Er-doped fibers (EDFs) based on P(2)O(5)-Al(2)O(3)-SiO(2) (PAS) ternary glass have been studied. A unique feature of this glass is the formation of a AlPO(4) join having a structure similar to that of SiO(2) glass and a refractive index below it. It is found that the Er(3+) absorption and emission spectra in the PAS EDFs are defined by the dopant (Al(2)O(3) or P(2)O(5)) present in excess and are close to those of the corresponding binary glass (Al(2)O(3)-SiO(2) or P(2)O(5)-SiO(2)). The presence of the AlPO(4) join results in the enhancement of the pump-to-signal conversion efficiency in the PAS EDFs as compared with the EDFs based on the P(2)O(5)-SiO(2) and Al(2)O(3)-SiO(2) (with 1.5 mol. %Al(2)O(3) and less) binary glasses. The PAS host glass is advantageous in the case of large-mode-area active fibers.

Cascaded lasing provided by Raman gain (at 1115-nm pumping) and random distributed feedback (via Rayleigh backscattering) in a 1.65-km phosphosilicate fiber is studied. Output power for the second Stokes component (1398 nm) exceeds 5 W at pump power of 11 W. In contrast to conventional cascaded Raman laser with high-Q cavity for the intermediate first Stokes component, there is no cavity here and no cavity losses, correspondingly. Longitudinal power distribution is shown to be quite different also. As a result, the efficiency of pump to 2nd Stokes wave conversion is not influenced by the intermediate stage and depends only on the integral attenuation in the fiber. Herewith, the number of generated 2nd Stokes photons at the output may even exceed the absorbed pump photons due to the lower attenuation of Stokes waves.

An original architecture of an active fiber allowing a nearly diffraction-limited beam to be produced is demonstrated. The active medium is a double-clad large-mode-area photonic-bandgap fiber consisting of a 10,000 ppm by weight Yb(3+)-doped core surrounded by an alternation of high- and low-index layers constituting a cylindrical photonic crystal. The periodic cladding allows the robust propagation of a approximately 200 microm(2) fundamental mode and efficiently discriminates against the high-order modes. The M(2) parameter was measured to be 1.17. A high-power cw laser was built exhibiting 80% slope efficiency above threshold. The robust propagation allows the fiber to be tightly bent. Weak incidence on the slope efficiency was observed with wounding radii as small as 6 cm.

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We present an experimental demonstration of an ultrafast all-optical thresholder based on a nonlinear Sagnac interferometer. The proposed design is intended for operation at very small nonlinear phase shifts. Therefore, it requires an in-loop nonlinearity lower than for the classical nonlinear loop mirror scheme. Only 15 meters of conventional (non-holey) silica-based fiber is used as a nonlinear element. The proposed thresholder is polarization insensitive and is good for multi-wavelength operation, meeting all the requirements for autocorrelation detection in various optical CDMA communication systems. The observed cubic transfer function is superior to the quadratic transfer function of second harmonic generation-based thresholders.

We report, for the first time to our knowledge, on a single-mode millijoule-level 100-nanosecond Er-doped fiber laser operating near 1550 nm. The system features a newly developed 35-μm-core Yb-free double-clad Er-doped fiber based on P(2)O(5)-Al(2)O(3)-SiO(2) glass matrix and produces pulses with energy as high as 1 mJ at repetition rates of 1-10 kHz.