We report on the generation of high-average-power and high-peak-power ultrashort pulses from a mode-locked fiber laser operating in the all-normal-dispersion regime. As gain medium, a large-mode-area ytterbium-doped large-pitch photonic-crystal fiber is used. The self-starting fiber laser delivers 27 W of average power at 50.57 MHz repetition rate, resulting in 534 nJ of pulse energy. The laser produces positively chirped 2 ps output pulses, which are compressed down to sub-100 fs, leading to pulse peak powers as high as 3.2 MW. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America
