Characterization of timing jitter in ultrafast fiber and Ti:S lasers

The timing jitter of erbium doped, fiber optic and Titanium: Sapphire lasers, both passively mode-locked ultrafast lasers at 80 MHz, is measured with unprecedented resolution and bandwidth. Using the balanced optical cross-correlator timing detector, we found a total integrated timing jitter of 2.2 fs rms [100 Hz, 1 MHz] for the fiber supercontinuum and only 55 as rms [100 Hz, 10 MHz] jitter for the Ti:S laser. This measurement of fiber laser jitter is an absolute measurement, since the jitter of the fiber laser was measured against the Ti:S laser, which is negligible.