Generation of 11-fs pulses from a self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser (original) (raw)

Generation of 11-fs pulses from a Ti:sapphire laser without the use of prisms

Optics Letters, 1994

The generation of highly stable optical pulses as short as 11 fs from a Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser containing no intracavity prisms is demonstrated. In the femtosecond oscillator design reported, novel dielectric mirrors provide broadband dispersion control for solitonlike pulse formation.

Generation of 16-fs pulses at 425 nm by extracavity frequency doubling of a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser

Optics Letters, 1995

An eff icient doubling scheme capable of producing 16-fs pulses centered at 425 nm with an average power of 40 mW is described. The system uses 15-fs pulses from a continuous-wave mode-locked Ti:sapphire oscillator centered at 850 nm. The pulse characteristics resulting from doubling with b-barium borate crystals of various lengths are presented. The results compare favorably with previous attempts at intracavity doubling and provide a more convenient route to femtosecond experiments with fully synchronized second-harmonic radiation.

Generation of 5-fs pulses and octave-spanning spectra directly from a Ti:sapphire laser

Optics Letters, 2001

Spectra extending from 600 to 1200 nm have been generated from a Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser producing 5-fs pulses. Specially designed double-chirped mirror pairs provide broadband controlled dispersion, and a second intracavity focus in a glass plate provides additional spectral broadening. These spectra are to our knowledge the broadest ever generated directly from a laser oscillator.

Sub-10-fs mirror-dispersion-controlled Ti:sapphire laser

Optics Letters, 1995

We demonstrate the generation of nearly bandwidth-limited 8-fs optical pulses near 0.8 mm from a self-modelocked Ti:sapphire laser oscillator, using chirped dielectric mirrors for dispersion control. The mode-locking performance is described, and limitations are discussed. 0146-9592/95/060602-03$6.00/0

Operation of a femtosecond Ti:sapphire solitary laser in the vicinity of zero group-delay dispersion

Optics Letters, 1993

We report the operating characteristics of a self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire solitary laser at reduced groupdelay dispersion. The generation of -12.3 fs near-sech 2 optical pulses at 775 nm is reported, together with experimental evidence for the dominant role of third-order dispersion (TOD) as a limiting factor to further pulse shortening in the oscillator. At reduced second-order dispersion excessive residual TOD is shown to lead to dispersive wave generation, and the position of the dispersive resonance is used to determine the ratio of the net secondand third-order intracavity dispersions. Since the magnitude of TOD rapidly decreases with increasing wavelength in prism-pair dispersion-compensated resonators, the oscillator presented has the potential for producing sub-10-fs pulses in the 800-nm wavelength region.

High-repetition-rate, high-average-power, mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser with an intracavity continuous-wave amplification scheme

Applied Physics Letters, 1999

We have demonstrated a high-average-power, mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser with an intracavity continuous-wave amplification scheme. The laser generated 150 fs pulses with 3.4 W average power at a repetition rate of 79 MHz. This simple amplification scheme can be applied for the power scaling of other lasers. Some years ago, there was a breakthrough in modelocking techniques for solid-state lasers. 1,2 Applying the techniques utilizing Kerr-type nonlinearity, most solid-state lasers could be mode-locked down to the femtosecond region. Shortly after that, amplification of these ultrashort pulses to gigawatt peak power was demonstrated 3 using chirped pulse amplification. 4 However, this kind of amplification reduces the pulse repetition rate to the order of ϳ100 kHz, and there is often a loss of time resolution in the final pulse. A higher repetition rate results in much smaller pulse fluctuation and excellent experimental signal-to-noise ratios. Much progress has been made in extending the spectral range of high-repetition-rate femtosecond pulses throughout the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared ͑IR͒ regions by using frequency conversion in crystals. The ϳ80 MHz, 2-W-level femtosecond Ti:sapphire lasers have been used for fourth harmonic generation near 200 nm, 5 visible range, 6-8 and IR range 9 optical parametric oscillator and coherent THzradiation from semiconductors. 10 If there is some scheme to scale the power of high-repetition-rate femtosecond lasers, there will be interesting applications for the various wavelength conversion techniques mentioned above. The requirement for the average power has been one of the most important factors especially for these lasers used as pump sources of THz-radiation from InAs in a magnetic field, 10 because THz-radiation power is known to have a quadratic dependence on the excitation high-repetition-rate femtosecond laser average power. Also, the average power is important for the intracavity doubling of a femtosecond laser. 11 In contrast to continuous wave ͑cw͒ high-average-power lasers, the power scaling of the high-repetition-rate femtosecond modelocked lasers is difficult. This is partly due to the limitation of available power from the pumping source. The major problem was the difficulty of maintaining the beam quality good enough for mode locking and balancing the thermal lens effect and Kerr lens effect at the same time. With these limitations, the output average power of femtosecond modelocked lasers has been limited to the 2 W level. In this letter, we describe a high-repetition-rate ͑79 MHz͒, highaverage-power ͑3.4 W͒, mode-locked femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser realized by applying an intracavity cwamplification scheme.

Pulse evolution dynamics of a femtosecond passively mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser

Optics Letters, 1992

The pulse-formation process in a femtosecond passively mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser with a saturable absorber is investigated. The time to reach the steady state is -200 As. The formation time dependence on the dye concentration and the coincidence of the steady-state pulse width with the self-mode-locked state without a saturable absorber indicate that the function of the saturable absorber is mainly to induce the initial modulation and to shorten the pulse-formation time.

The correlation of mode locked pulse and femtosecond pulse generation by ultrafast Ti:sapphire laser in the stability region

2011

The correlation between mode locked pulse and its corresponding femtosecond generation are reported. A non-self starting Ti:sapphire laser was aligned to induce mode locked pulse. The cavity length was adjusted in the range from 104 to 105 mm to stabilize the mode locked pulse train. The mode locked pulse was recorded via high speed oscilloscope at various cavity lengths in the stability region. The corresponding femtosecond pulse generation was simultaneously measured via autocorrelator. This is referred as conjugate method. The result shows that the femtosecond pulse found to be having a linear relationship with mode locked pulse with the conversion efficiency achieved up to 8%.

Continuous-wave mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser focusable to 5 × 10^13 W/cm^2

Optics Letters, 1998

Generation of sub-10-fs pulses with an average power of 1 W and a peak of 1.5 MW from a Kerr-lens mode-locked mirror-dispersion-controlled Ti:sapphire laser is demonstrated. A specially designed lens triplet focuses the output of this compact all-solid-state source to a peak intensity in excess of 5 3 10 13 W͞cm 2 . Nonperturbative nonlinear optics is now becoming feasible by use of the output of a cw mode-locked laser.