Pre-chirping management of a self-similar Yb-fiber amplifier towards 80 W average power with sub-40 fs pulse generation

We report on the generation of 80-W average power 38-fs laser pulse from a 2-m polarization-maintaining large-mode-area photonic crystal fiber amplifier with high pump absorption coefficient. The pre-chirping management was demonstrated to play a key role on the self-similar amplification. The achieved spectral bandwidth and compressed pulse duration were determined by the interplay between self-phase modulation and finite gain bandwidth. The power scaling in the self-similar fiber amplifier system was eventually limited by the onset of stimulated Raman scattering.