Figure 1.

Conceptual depiction of mode-locking regimes. Each of the top four plots show two possible evolutions within a cavity operating in the given regime, but with different average dispersion. Dotted lines indicate the local dispersion of the cavity, while solid lines depict the pulse chirp. In the bottom-right plot, solid lines correspond to the difference of the pulse from a parabolic shape (smaller values correspond to more parabolic pulses), and the dotted line shows the division between the passive or active normal dispersion fiber and the rest of the cavity.