Construction of a Femtosecond Fiber Laser for Teaching and supercontinuum generation

It is shown that a femtosecond fiber laser with a pulse repetition rate of 31 MHz, pulse width of 440 fs, central wavelength of 1560 nm and 42 mW average output power is successfully constructed. Such a laser source shows excellent stability with little frequency chirp, and it is compact, robust, lightweight, inexpensive, and easy to operate and maintain. With all these advantages, this laser is very suitable for both graduate and undergraduate students to study and experiment on femtosecond lasers. It is also suitable to build up a supercontinuum source.