Optimised one-step compression of femtosecond fibre laser soliton pulses around 1550nm to below 30 fs in highly nonlinear fibre

Optimised compression of femtosecond fibre laser pulses in highly nonlinear fibre is demonstrated. Specifically reported are compressed pulse durations below 30 fs using a simple setup where a single sub-10 cm segment of highly nonlinear fibre is directly spliced to the output pigtail of a commercial femtosecond fibre laser. The compressed pulse quality is confirmed through frequency resolved optical gating measurements.