TABLE OF CONTENTS Ultrashort pulse generation using optical techniques is important for research and development in many areas of science and technology. Among its many applications, ultrashort pulse sources are required for realising high-speed optical communication networks [ [1]]. The growing bandwidth demand has led to research into all-optical technology to meet the transmission capacity and speed requirements of today and the future. Although it is foreseen that wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems [ [2]] will gradually replace the legacy technology of synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH) [ [3]], another possible solution in the future is optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) systems [ [4], [5]]. In fact, to realise the full potential of the optical fibre, a combination of both WDM and OTDM is envisaged [ [1], [6], [7]]. In such OTDM systems, optical pulses are interleaved before being transmitted over a single optical fibre at aggregate rates in excess of 40 Gb/s [ [6], [8]]. Optical pulse sources are also required for soliton transmission systems, which are designed to overcome the fibre dispersion problem [ [9], [10]]. In addition, optical pulses are used as control signals for ultrafast all-optical signal processing in devices such as the nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) [ [11] [12] [13]]. Other applications of optical pulses include measurement of ultrafast relaxation processes for fundamental research in physics and chemistry, laser fusion in manufacturing systems, and optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) [ [14]
