33-fs Yb-fiber laser comb locked to Cs-atomic clock

Despite the prevalence of fiber frequency combs around 1.5 μm, few fully stabilized frequency combs have been demonstrated around 1.0 μm, despite the generally superior performance of Yb-fiber lasers compared to Er-fiber lasers. Short pulses are to generate coherent supercontinuum using anomalous dispersion regime of microstructured fibers. Near-zero cavity dispersion is highly desirable for low-noise frequency comb performance. Here, we report a Yb-doped fiber laser that operates at net-zero group-velocity dispersion and produces pulses that can be compressed externally to 33-fs. The frequency comb generated by this system is repetition-and carrier-envelope-phase-locked to Cs atomic clocks. The laser oscillator design is based on a novel algorithmic methodology, which allows us to design cavities to meet specific requirements; in this case, there was the need to generate as short pulses as possible, while having several nJ of pulse energy and the cavity at strictly zero total dispersion.