Generating few-cycle pulses for nanoscale photoemission easily with an erbium-doped fiber laser

We demonstrate a simple setup capable of generating four-cycle pulses at a center wavelength of 1700nm for nanoscale photoemission. Pulses from an amplified erbium-doped fiber laser are spectrally broadened by propagation through a highly non-linear fiber. Subsequently, we exploit dispersion in two different types of glass to compress the pulses. The pulse length is estimated by measuring an interferometric autocorrelation trace and comparing it to a numerical simulation. We demonstrate highly non-linear photoemission of electrons from a nanometric tungsten tip in a hitherto unexplored pulse parameter range. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America