We report measurement of the first carrier-envelope offset (CEO) frequency signal from a spectrally broadened ultrafast solid-state laser oscillator operating in the 1.5 µm spectral region. The f -to-2f CEO frequency beat signal is 49 dB above the noise floor (100-kHz resolution bandwidth) and the free-running linewidth of 3.6 kHz is significantly better than typically obtained by ultrafast fiber laser systems. We used a SESAM mode-locked Er:Yb:glass laser generating 170-fs pulses at a 75 MHz pulse repetition rate with 110-mW average power. It is pumped by one standard telecom-grade 980-nm diode consuming less than 1.5 W of electrical power. Without any further pulse compression and amplification, a coherent octave-spanning frequency comb is generated in a polarization-maintaining highly-nonlinear fiber (PM-HNLF). The fiber length was optimized to yield a strong CEO frequency beat signal between the outer Raman soliton and the spectral peak of the dispersive wave within the supercontinuum. The polarizationmaintaining property of the supercontinuum fiber was crucial; comparable octave-spanning supercontinua from two non-PM fibers showed higher intensity noise and poor coherence. A stable CEO-beat was observed even with pulse durations above 200 fs. Achieving a strong CEO frequency signal from relatively long pulses with moderate power levels substantially relaxes the demands on the driving laser,

We present a diode-pumped Yb:KGW laser with a repetition rate of 1 GHz and a pulse duration of 281 fs at a wavelength of 1041 nm. A high brightness distributed Bragg reflector tapered diode laser is used as a pump source. Stable soliton modelocking is achieved with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). The obtained average output power is 1.1 W and corresponds to a peak power of 3.9 kW and a pulse energy of 1.1 nJ. With harmonic modelocking we could increase the pulse repetition rate up to 4 GHz with an average power of 900 mW and a pulse duration of 290 fs. This Yb:KGW laser has a high potential for stable frequency comb generation.

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We report the first full stabilization of an optical frequency comb generated from a femtosecond diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL) operating in the 1.5-μm spectral region. The stability of the comb is characterized in free-running and in phase-locked operation by measuring the noise properties of the carrier-envelope offset (CEO) beat, of the repetition rate, and of a comb line at 1558 nm. The high Q-factor of the semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM)-modelocked 1.5-µm DPSSL results in a low-noise CEO-beat, for which a tight phase lock can be much more easily realized than for a fiber comb. Using a moderate feedback bandwidth of only 5.5 kHz, we achieved a residual integrated phase noise of 0.72 rad rms for the locked CEO, which is one of the smallest values reported for a frequency comb system operating in this spectral region. The fractional frequency stability of the CEO-beat is 20‑fold better than measured in a standard self-referenced commercial fiber comb system and contributes only 10(-15) to the optical carrier frequency instability at 1 s averaging time.

Stable ultrafast laser sources at multi-GHz repetition rates are important for various application areas, such as optical sampling, frequency comb metrology, or advanced high-speed return-to-zero telecom systems. We review SESAM-mode-locked Er,Yb:glass lasers operating in the 1.5 µm spectral region at multi-GHz repetition rates, discussing the key improvements that have enabled increasing the repetition rate up to 100 GHz. We also present further improved results with shorter pulse durations from a 100 GHz Er,Yb:glass laser. With an improved SESAM design we achieved 1.1 ps pulses with up to 30 mW average output power. Moreover, we discuss for the first time the importance of beam quality deteriorations arising from frequency-degenerate higher order spatial modes in such lasers.