Ultrafast soliton pulse compression and delivery in hollow-core fiber

We investigate soliton self-compression in gas-filled hollow-core fiber, with particular emphasis on realizing real-word applications. To demonstrate an effective balance of compression ratio and pulse quality we present an optimally-designed neon-filled anti-resonant hollow-core fiber which achieves six-fold temporal compression to 46 fs with a pulse quality factor of 0.82. This compression ratio is obtained across a range of pulse energies between 0.7 – 7.5 µJ simply by adjusting the fiber pressure and exploiting the invariance of soliton dynamics. This was achieved by conserving the product of pulse energy and fiber pressure, whilst benefiting from the fact that the dispersion of the relatively small diameter hollow-core fiber is essentially constant with pressure changes. Furthermore, this system demonstrates excellent resilience against power fluctuations with a decrease in pulse duration of just 13.5 % for a power increase of 25 %. The system demonstrated impressive polarization maintenance properties, achieving a compressed output polarization extinction ratio of 23 dB, in addition to a strong resilience against external perturbations.