Efficient frequency doubling of a femtosecond fiber laser.

We report optimization of a stretched-pulse erbium-doped fiber laser for second-harmonic generation and the evaluation of several nonlinear crystals for this application. With compressed fundamental pulse energies of 2.7 nJ at 31.8 MHz, we achieved 10% conversion efficiency and 86-fs, 771-nm pulses with energies of 270 pJ. Frequency-resolved optical gating was used to analyze both the fundamental and the frequencydoubled pulses.