Widely tunable sub-30-fs pulses from a compact erbium-doped fiber source.

Coupling femtosecond light pulses from an all-fiber Er:laser system into a dispersion-shifted and highly non-linear fiber, we generate output spectra exhibiting two broadband and mutually coherent maxima. Depending on the chirp of the input pulse, the spectral separation is easily tunable over a wide range up to values exceeding 100 THz. In this way, the source provides access to an ultrabroadband wavelength interval from 1130 to 1950 nm. Because of soliton effects, the long-wave component exhibits a transform-limited pulse width of 40 fs directly after the nonlinear element. The high-frequency part propagating in the dispersive regime is recompressed to pulse durations as short as 24 fs with an optimized prism sequence.