Enhanced mode locking of color-center lasers

Kean, P.N.; Xian, Zhu; Crust, D.W.; Grant, R. S.; Langford, N.; Sibbett, W.

doi:10.1364/ol.14.000039

Cited by 163 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Today in solid-state lasers, dyes have either demonstrated for a case where no soliton effects \vere present (22). In this case, an uncompressed pulse was fed back into the main cavity.…”

Section: Saturable Absorbers and Passive Mode-lockingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frontiers in Ultrashort Pulse Generation: Pushing the Limits in Linear and Nonlinear Optics

Steinmeyer

Sutter

Gallmann

et al. 1999

Science

367

191

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Optical pulses in the 5-femtosecond range are produced by a variety of methods. Although different in technical detail, each method relies on the same three key components: spectral broadening due to the nonlinear optical Kerr effect, dispersion control, and ultrabroadband amplification. The state of the art of ultrashort pulse generation is reviewed with a focus on direct laser oscillator schemes.

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“…Today in solid-state lasers, dyes have either demonstrated for a case where no soliton effects \vere present (22). In this case, an uncompressed pulse was fed back into the main cavity.…”

Section: Saturable Absorbers and Passive Mode-lockingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frontiers in Ultrashort Pulse Generation: Pushing the Limits in Linear and Nonlinear Optics

Steinmeyer

Sutter

Gallmann

et al. 1999

Science

367

191

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show abstract

“…This work led to the accidental discovery of additive pulse modelocking (APM) because the "wrong" fiber with positive instead of negative GDD was used inside a coupled cavity but stable modelocking was still observed in 1989 [55]. This was initially a puzzling result because generally a pulse becomes broadened after propagating in a fiber with positive dispersion.…”

Section: Coupled-cavity Modelockingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ultrafast solid-state laser oscillators: a success story for the last 20 years with no end in sight

Keller

2010

Appl. Phys. B

210

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Ultrashort lasers provide an important tool to probe the dynamics of physical systems at very short timescales, allowing for improved understanding of the performance of many devices and phenomena used in science, technology, and medicine. In addition ultrashort pulses also provide a high peak intensity and a broad optical spectrum, which opens even more applications such as material processing, nonlinear optics, attosecond science, and metrology. There has been a long-standing, ongoing effort in the field to reduce the pulse duration and increase the power of these lasers to continue to empower existing and new applications. After 1990, new techniques such as semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs) and Kerrlens mode locking (KLM) allowed for the generation of stable pulse trains from diode-pumped solid-state lasers for the first time, and enabled the performance of such lasers to improve by several orders of magnitude with regards to pulse duration, pulse energy and pulse repetition rates. This invited review article gives a broad overview and includes some personal accounts of the key events during the last 20 years, which made ultrafast solid-state lasers a success story. Ultrafast Ti:sapphire, diode-pumped solid-state, and novel semiconductor laser oscillators will be reviewed. The perspective for the near future indicates continued significant progress in the field. Current status and introductionAs we look back from today in 2010 for the last 20 years, we see that ultrafast solid-state lasers have become the key U. Keller ( ) Institute of Quantum Electronics, Physics Department, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: keller@phys.ethz.ch enabling technology for many new applications, and have established themselves successfully in at least several industrial areas. The situation was substantially different 20 years ago, when ultrafast lasers were predominantly based on dye laser technology or active modelocked solid-state lasers, and it was assumed that passive modelocking of diode-pumped solid-state lasers was very difficult, if not impossible. Key breakthroughs came with the invention of the semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) [1,2] and Kerr-lens modelocking (KLM) [3]. Previously, Q-switching instabilities prevented stable passive modelocking of diode-pumped solid-state lasers for more than 25 years. This breakthrough was enabled through the major progress in solid-state laser technology: first with the discovery of the Ti:sapphire laser material [4] and second with the rapid progress in highpower semiconductor diode-laser arrays to efficiently pump solid-state lasers.For this invited review paper for the special celebration of Volume 100 in Applied Physics B, I will provide some more details describing the events that led to the rapid progress in ultrafast solid-state lasers. I have been actively involved at the frontier of this field for more than 20 years and can provide some more personal insight into how the field evolved. Furthermore, many important results have been ...

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“…This approach exploits the intensitydependent phase profile of figure 6(a) and thus produces an intensity-dependent loss-the requirement for passive mode-locking. The technique is called Coupled Cavity Mode-locking (CCM) [30] or Additive Pulse Mode-locking (APM) [31]. This approach was first demonstrated as early as 1984 [32] but, after intensive refinement, it is rarely used in bulk solid-state lasers owing to the requirement to stabilize the differential pathlength of the interferometer to better than one wavelength.…”

Section: (T) Is the Phase Delay As A Function Of Time Experienced Bymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ultrafast solid-state lasers

French¹

1996

Contemporary Physics

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This article is intended to provide an introduction to ultrafast laser development for scientists new to the field and to provide a snapshot of the current state-of-the-art. In thejrst section, the main issues concerning ultrashort pulse generation are discussed and then the basic techniques of mode-locking are reviewed at a tutorial level. These include active modelocking, passive mode-locking with real, resonant, saturable absorbers and passive modelocking with the optical Kerr effect. Emphasis is placed on practical ultrafast solid-state lasers for real-world applications.

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Enhanced mode locking of color-center lasers

Cited by 163 publications

References 7 publications

Frontiers in Ultrashort Pulse Generation: Pushing the Limits in Linear and Nonlinear Optics

Frontiers in Ultrashort Pulse Generation: Pushing the Limits in Linear and Nonlinear Optics

Ultrafast solid-state laser oscillators: a success story for the last 20 years with no end in sight

Ultrafast solid-state lasers

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