Generation of 290 fs laser pulses by self-seeding and soliton compression

Self-seeding with subsequent chirp compensation presents a simple way to generate pulses of a few picoseconds width tunable over more than 30 nm. Further compression of the laser pulses exploiting nonlinear effects in optical fibers (soliton compression) allows the generation of laser pulses with a full width at half maximum of less than 300 fs. Application of these pulses in an electro-optical sampling system is demonstrated.