Pulse compression techniques using highly nonlinear fibers

Abstract We review optical pulse compression techniques based on optical fibers. After discussing the fundamental issues on pulse compression, we summarize and categorize various kinds of techniques for pulse compression. We then focus on the use of highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) in a pulse compressor to improve the performance. Introducing a figure of merit, we discuss which kind of HNLF of those recently reported is the most suitable for applications to pulse compression. As a HNLF‐based optical pulse compressor, we review the technologies of the comb‐like profiled fiber (CPF) which consists of alternate concatenations of HNLF and single‐mode fiber. Discussing the features of CPF, we show that CPF is a truly practical and flexible solution for optical pulse compression. Finally, we refer to a new class of pulse compression called “the stationary rescaled pulse (SRP)”, which is a characteristic nonlinear stationary pulse propagating through CPF. The propagation characteristics of the SRP provides a systematic and efficient design method of CPF as well as optical pulse compression that has never been achieved by conventional pulse compression schemes. As an example, a highly steep pulse compression in CPF is demonstrated, where a pulse is compressed by a factor of 2.1 per step of the CPF, and a 7.2 ps‐width optical pulse is compressed to 0.38 ps with a four‐step structure of CPF.