Subfemtosecond hybrid synchronization between ultrafast Yb and Er fiber laser systems by controlling the relative injection timing.

We report experimental as well as theoretical investigation of the key factors that influence the relative timing jitter between hybrid synchronized ultrafast Yb and Er fiber laser systems. Experimental results show that, within the achievable synchronization range, the synchronization performance varies significantly with the relative injection timing between the 1 μm master and 1.5 μm slave pulses. This observation is in agreement with the insights obtained from the theoretical analysis, which identifies the retiming effect as a function of the initial condition of the master-slave pulse collision. By controlling the relative injection timing with a low-bandwidth intracavity feedback, relative timing jitter as low as 0.87 fs (within 1.9 MHz bandwidth) is successfully obtained.