Fiber lasers and amplifiers novel avenues to real world applications of ultrashort lasers

Rare-earth-doped fibers have established themselves as an attractive and power scalable solid-state laser concept. In continuous-wave operation output powers approaching the kW-regime with diffraction-limited beam quality have been demonstrated. In the pulsed regime average powers of more than 50 W even for femtosecond fiber laser systems have been reported. We discuss the feasibility of high average power (> 100 W) and high energy (similar to 100 muJ) femtosecond fiber CPA systems. Novel fiber geometries based on microstructured large-core air-clad fibers are introduced, which allow for a significant performance scaling. Furthermore, an all-fiber CPA system including an air-core photonic band-gap fiber compressor is presented. This approach opens the avenue to a completely fiber integrated high performance short pulse laser system. Applying the ultrafast fiber laser system three-dimensional photonic structures in different glasses and also crystalline media have been generated by tight focusing of the ultrashort laser pulses into the material. Using the ultrashort pulse lasers we fabricated low loss waveguides (< 0.5 dB/cm) at writing speeds of 100 mm/s. The influence of the writing speed on the produced structures as well as their optical properties will be discussed in detail.