Ultrafast fibre laser sources: Examples of recent developments

We summarise a number of recent experimental developments in the field of ultrafast compact all-fibre lasers, including: ionically-doped coloured glass saturable absorbers; Tm:fibre lasers utilising graphene around 2 μm; alternative layered materials including MoS2; passively synchronised, coupled-cavity ultrafast dual-wavelength fibre lasers; and schemes for the generation of high repetition rate femtosecond pulses based on phase modulation, and spectral masking of CW radiation. The breadth of light sources covered in this review highlights the diversity of approaches in ongoing research in the field of ultrafast fibre optics.