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Optica Publishing Group
  • International Quantum Electronics Conference
  • 1996 OSA Technical Digest Series (Optica Publishing Group, 1996),
  • paper WL20

Compact and efficient diode-based ultrafast lasers

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Abstract

Producing a reliable source of sub-100 fs pulses that uses a solid-state-diode pump would greatly simplify the use of ultrafast measurement techniques. recently much research has centred on the development of such a source using AlGaInP 670 nm diodes to pump Cr:LiSAF and related materials. An alternative is pumping Ti:sapphire with a solid state green source: doubled Nd:YAG or Nd:YLF pumped with GaAlAs 808 nm diodes. We have used our commerically available YAG SHG source, the Coherent DPSS-532, which uses a single 4-W laser diode pump, to pump a KLM Ti:sapphire laser. The design philosophy for a low- power pumped laser is simple: use a short heavily doped Ti:Al2O3 crystal in a resonator with a small waist in crystal. We find optimum performance using an uncoated 5.0 mm long Brewster rod of 0.20% doped material placed in a symmetric z-fold cavity using 7.5 cm radius of curvature mirrors. With a 4% outcoupler we observe a laser threshold around 200 mW of pump and slope efficiency near 40%. With fused silica prism dispersion compensation an output power of 175 mW at 790 nm with 53 fs pulses is produced, this entire modelocked laser has been assembled in a 110x500 mm2 footprint and operates reliably with more than 100 mW of modelocked power using a single 110 V power cord. We have reduced the laser optical footprint further by using mirrors to replace the prisms for dispersion compensation. A simple GTI mirror is produced by adding to a normal HR mirror a 1.33 micron thick overcoat of SiO2 This optic results in -70 fs2 of group delay dispersion per reflection around 800 nm. With two parallel GTI mirrors used to produce 16 intracavity bounces per roundtrip a laser pumped with 550 mW produces 125 mW with a bandwidth 13 nm and a pulsewidth of 100 fs. Experience with the DPSS laser leads us to believe we can produce lasers with this design with 10,000 hour lifetimes. We have also started development of a Cr:LiSAF ultrafast laser of similar design using 100 micron wide 670 nm laser diodes produced at our facility. These diodes have shown more than 3,000 hour lifetimes and are under continued development. Pumping the Cr:LiSAF laser with 350 m?W from a single diode produces 70 MW of 50 fs pulses at 860 nm. This has been compressed to 50 mW of 30 fs pulses with two fused silica prisms outside the cavity. The latest results in this development will be presented.

© 1996 Optical Society of America

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