47-fs Kerr-lens mode-locked Cr:ZnSe laser with high spectral purity

Abstract

We report on a room-temperature Kerr-lens mode-locked Cr:ZnSe femtosecond laser operating at around 2.4 μm emission wavelength. Self-starting nearly transform-limited pulse trains with a minimum duration of 47 fs, corresponding to six optical cycles, and average output power of 0.25 W are obtained with repetition frequencies in the range from 140 to 300 MHz. The femtosecond pulse train is characterized by high-spectral purity and low time jitter.

Generation of broad spectral components from midwave infrared ultrashort pulse laser propagation through ZnSe and ZnS

“…Understanding how MIR light interacts with these optical materials may lead to new applications related to SWIR and MIR laser media such as Fe:ZnSe 28 and Cr:ZnSe. 29 In addition, the successful simulation results demonstrate the adaptability of UPPE to model a wide variety of transparent materials and incorporate experimentally derived values. Our future work will include simulations of Cleartran and single crystal ZnS as well as experimental Table 2.…”

Super-octave longwave mid-infrared coherent transients produced by optical rectification of few-cycle 25-μm pulses

“…3. Using the procedure described in [26,27], we estimated the relative root-mean-square pulse energy fluctuations to be <5 • 10 −4 and the relative time jitter (with respect to the pulse period) to be <10 −5 . The obtained estimates are approximate and conservative, as we detected the laser intensity at its SH wavelength.…”

Femtosecond laser written diamond waveguides: A step towards integrated photonics in the far infrared

“…The mechanisms responsible for waveguiding in diamond in the mid-IR for the larger track separations of 30-40 m reported here are still under investigation. Thanks to the availability of a KLM Cr:ZnSe laser that generates pulse trains at 2.4 µm with of pulse duration of few-optical cycles 20 , the group delay dispersion characteristics of the diamond waveguides were studied by coupling transform-limited pulses and measuring the output pulse duration and chirp using an interferometric autocorrelation based on two-photon absorption in an InGaAs photodiode (cutoff wavelength 1.7 μm) as shown in Fig. 1.…”