Exploitation of stimulated Raman scattering in short-pulse fiber amplifiers.

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) generally limits the performance of short-pulse fiber amplifiers. We present the results of experiments that show that, under some conditions, SRS can extend the performance of amplifiers limited by nonlinear phase accumulation. The Stokes spectrum can be free of distortions arising from self-phase modulation and can circumvent the gain-narrowing limit of the amplifier. The generation of 1 microJ and 90 fs pulses from a single-mode fiber amplifier illustrates the potential of the process.