Laser Stabilization: Carrier‐Envelope‐Offset Frequency Stable 100 W‐Level Femtosecond Thin‐Disk Oscillator (Laser Photonics Rev. 13(3)/2019)

Abstract

In article number https://doi.org/10.1002/lpor.201800256, Sebastian Gröbmeyer and co‐workers demonstrate a carrier‐envelope‐offset‐frequency stable laser with a high peak power of 100 W. The frequency stabilization is achieved via Kerr‐lensing in a quartz crystal which doubles as an acousto‐optic loss‐modulator. Image credit: Thorsten Naeser and Dennis Luck together with the authors.

A Decade of Sub‐100‐fs Thin‐Disk Laser Oscillators

“…It can also be noticed that several research groups have been recently returning back to Yb:YAG. [ 48,50,54 ] The commercial availability and the suitability for high average powers seem to outweigh the narrower gain bandwidth. Moreover, with the recent progress of Kerr‐lens mode‐locked TDL oscillators, it has been shown that the narrow gain bandwidth can be compensated by the self‐phase modulation (SPM) inside the laser, [ 33,40,53 ] as will be discussed in the next section.…”

“…The red hexagon markers depict the parameters after nonlinear pulse compression. [35,50,65,[96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103] The bell jar symbols indicate systems operated in vacuum. For references, [35,103] the peak power was calculated based on the compression ratio, power efficiency and compression efficiency stated in the manuscripts, which is likely an overoptimistic estimate.…”

“…[112] Recently several major steps have been made in this direction. The demonstration of CEO stabilization of a 100-W class TDL oscillator [50] followed by another 100-MW class oscillator directly emitting 50-fs pulses [54] is highly promising. Especially, in combination with the advances in multipass cell bulk compression schemes, which have been routinely reaching sub-30-fs pulses at these power levels [100,102] and most recently even 8.5 fs.…”

“…The concept has been further scaled toward 100‐W level in 2019, demonstrating 40‐fs nonlinearly compressed pulses at 105 W of average power and residual in‐loop integrated phase noise of 90 mrad. [ 50 ]…”

“…The numbers in the markers correspond to the references. [ 9–57 ] The underlying data used for generation of the graphs are also provided in the Appendix in Table A1.…”