172 fs, 24.3 kW peak power pulse generation from a Ho-doped fiber laser system.

We demonstrate a high-peak-power femtosecond fiber laser system based on single-mode holmium (Ho)-doped fibers. 833 fs, 27.7 MHz pulses at 2083.4 nm generated in a passively mode-locked Ho fiber laser are amplified and compressed to near transform-limited 172 fs, 7.2 nJ pulses with 24.3 kW peak power. We achieve this performance level by using the soliton effect and high-order soliton compression. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of sub-200 fs pulses, with peak power exceeding 10 kW from a Ho-doped single-mode fiber laser system without using bulk optics compressors.