Ultrafast lasers are of interest for a wide range of applications in fundamental research and their advent opened widespread applications in laser marking, laser machining, optical metrology, and spectroscopy, to name a few. Nowadays, ultrafast lasers are taking over significant market shares, especially for bright high-power ultrafast fiber lasers that own advantages of high peak power, sub-50 fs pulse duration, ease of use, and maintenance-free operation, which is crucial for industrial applications, linking directly to job creation. Tremendous progress has been made in the development of ultrafast fiber lasers in terms of the pulse peak power, the pulse duration as well as the temporal and spectral characteristics, but the maximum pulse peak power and pulse energy that can be obtained in ultrafast fiber lasers are currently limited by the maximum nonlinear phase that the pulses can tolerate. This is deeply rooted into nonlinear dynamics, which puts forward a strong demand for understanding the nonlinear dynamics of ultrafast fiber lasers, deepening the understanding of ultrafast fiber lasers and enhancing the performances of ultrafast fiber lasers that can drive the science and applications towards new frontiers.
The project of FLORIDA has been to address the challenge of providing a general understanding of the rich nonlinear dynamics of ultrafast fiber lasers, which allows helping design of powerful ultrafast fiber lasers, enhancing the stability of nonlinear systems. The implementation of the project will also provide an essential tool for monitoring the laser stability and also develops early warning for applications requiring stable ultrashort pulse operation.
