Abstract
Recently, stable sources of 100-fs pulses around 1.5 μm have been developed, all of which take advantage of alkali halide crystals as their gain media. The soliton laser1 and closely related additive pulse mode-locked (APM) laser2,3 are capable of delivering 100-fs (and below) pulses with output powers of up to 300 mW at a 100-MHz repetition rate leading to pulse energies of ~1.5 mJ. For some applications, however, it is desirable to achieve even higher intensities and pulse energies. In this context NaCl F-center crystals are an attractive candidate because of their large gain bandwidth (200 nm), large cross section, and gain lifetime of ~200 ns, which permits the necessary energy storage. A first demonstration of the potential of F-center crystal amplifiers was done in a copper vapor laser pumped KCl:Li crystal that was employed to amplify nanosecond pulses.4
© 1990 Optical Society of America
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