Chirped-pulse oscillators: theory and experiment

Theory of chirped-pulse oscillators operating in the positive dispersion regime is presented. It is found that the chirped pulses can be described analytically as solitary pulse solutions of the nonlinear cubic-quintic complex Ginzburg–Landau equation. Due to the closed form of the solution, basic characteristics of the regime under consideration are easily traceable. Numerical simulations validate the analytical technique and the chirped-pulse stability. Experiments with 10 MHz Ti:Sa oscillator providing up to 150 nJ chirped pulses, which are compressible down to 30 fs, are in agreement with the theory.