Palm-top-size, 15 kW peak-power, and femtosecond (160 fs) diode-pumped mode-locked Yb^+3:KY(WO_4)_2 solid-state laser with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror

Yamazoe, Shogo; Katou, M.; Adachi, Takashi; Kasamatsu, Tadashi

doi:10.1364/ol.35.000748

Cited by 30 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Such a requirement has stimulated recent research endeavors in developing femotosecond lasers with >1 GHz repetition rate. Although 10 GHz repetition-rate operation has been achieved in a Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser (and frequency comb) [2], scaling up repetition-rate is being intensively pursued in femtosecond lasers incorporating Yb-doped gain materials which can be directly diode pumped and exhibit excellent power scalability [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. A survey of high repetition-rate (>1 GHz) femtosecond lasers with Yb-doped gain media (Table 1) shows that most of these lasers are of relative narrow bandwidth supporting pulse durations of well-exceeding 100 fs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency comb based on a narrowband Yb-fiber oscillator: pre-chirp management for self-referenced carrier envelope offset frequency stabilization

Lim¹,

Chen²,

Chang³

et al. 2013

Opt. Express

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Laser frequency combs are normally based on mode-locked oscillators emitting ultrashort pulses of ~100-fs or shorter. In this paper, we present a self-referenced frequency comb based on a narrowband (5-nm bandwidth corresponding to 415-fs transform-limited pulses) Yb-fiber oscillator with a repetition rate of 280 MHz. We employ a nonlinear Ybfiber amplifier to both amplify the narrowband pulses and broaden their optical spectrum. To optimize the carrier envelope offset frequency (f CEO ), we optimize the nonlinear pulse amplification by pre-chirping the pulses at the amplifier input. An optimum negative pre-chirp exists, which produces a signal-to-noise ratio of 35 dB (100 kHz resolution bandwidth) for the detected f CEO . We phase stabilize the f CEO using a feed-forward method, resulting in 0.64-rad (integrated from 1 Hz to 10 MHz) phase noise for the in-loop error signal. This work demonstrates the feasibility of implementing frequency combs from a narrowband oscillator, which is of particular importance for realizing large line-spacing frequency combs based on multi-GHz oscillators usually emitting long (>200 fs) pulses.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency comb based on a narrowband Yb-fiber oscillator: pre-chirp management for self-referenced carrier envelope offset frequency stabilization

Lim¹,

Chen²,

Chang³

et al. 2013

Opt. Express

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“…The significantly simplified astro-comb requires only one FP cavity and becomes more reliable. Several types of femtosecond mode-locked lasers have demonstrated operation with a >1 GHz repetition rate [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Up to date, however, fully stabilized frequency combs with >1 GHz comb spacing are only implemented based on Ti:Sapphire lasers (10 GHz) [16], Yb-fiber lasers (1 GHz) [17], and most recently Er-fiber lasers (1 GHz) [18].…”

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confidence: 99%

3 GHz, fundamentally mode-locked, femtosecond Yb-fiber laser

Chen

Chang

et al. 2012

Opt. Lett.

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We demonstrate a fundamentally mode-locked Yb-fiber laser with 3 GHz repetition rate and ∼206 fs pulse duration. The laser incorporates two enabling technologies: a 1 cm heavily Yb-doped phosphate glass fiber as the gain medium and a high-dispersion (−1300 fs 2 ) output coupler to manage cavity dispersion. The oscillator self-starts and generates up to 53 mW average power. © 2012 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 140.3510, 060.3510, 140.4050, 140.7090, 320.7090. High-repetition-rate (>1 GHz) lasers with femtosecond pulse duration are required in many applications. For nonlinear bio-optical imaging (e.g., two-photon fluorescence excitation microscopy), in which photo-induced damage is caused by pulse energy rather than average power, increasing pulse repetition rate will improve signal-to-noise ratio and reduce data acquisition time [1]. Frequency combs, which are achieved by fully stabilizing both the repetition rate and the carrier-envelope offset frequency of multi-GHz lasers, exhibit large line spacing (equal to the laser's repetition rate) that may permit access to and manipulation of each individual comb line. Such capabilities have opened numerous frequency domain applications, including optical arbitrary waveform generation, high-speed analog-to-digital conversion, and high-resolution spectroscopy [2]. Of particular importance is precision calibration of astronomical spectrographs to search for Earth-like exoplanets, which normally requires femtosecond laser frequency combs with >15 GHz line spacing ("astro-comb") [3][4][5][6][7][8]. Current implementation of an astro-comb relies on using multiple Fabry-Perot (FP) filtering cavities to multiply the line spacing of a frequency comb based on low-repetition-rate lasers. For example, Wilken et al.'s astro-comb system employed a 250 MHz Yb-fiber laser as the front end, followed by three cascade FP filtering cavities for line-space multiplication [7]. Stabilizing these FP cavities, locking them to the frequency comb, and preventing parasitic cavities between two FP cavities constitute the major challenge in constructing a practical astro-comb. Such an issue can be alleviated by employing a frequency comb based on a femtosecond laser operating at a much higher repetition rate (e.g., 3-10 GHz). The significantly simplified astro-comb requires only one FP cavity and becomes more reliable. Several types of femtosecond mode-locked lasers have demonstrated operation with a >1 GHz repetition rate [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Up to date, however, fully stabilized frequency combs with >1 GHz comb spacing are only implemented based on Ti:Sapphire lasers (10 GHz) [16], Yb-fiber lasers (1 GHz) [17], and most recently Er-fiber lasers (1 GHz) [18]. Among them, Yb-fiber laser frequency combs possess superior power scalability thanks to the rapid development of double-clad Yb-fibers and high-brightness pump diodes, as well as the Yb-fiber's high pump-to-signal conversion efficiency (∼80%). For example, Yb-fiber laser frequency combs with 80 W average power have been d...

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“…First gigahertz femtosecond pulses have been generated using diode-pumped Yb:KYW [115] and Yb:KGW [116] lasers. Also very impressive results have been obtained with femtosecond VECSELs, although the average power is still limited in this regime [29].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

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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Palm-top-size, 15 kW peak-power, and femtosecond (160 fs) diode-pumped mode-locked Yb^+3:KY(WO_4)_2 solid-state laser with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror

Cited by 30 publications

References 13 publications

Frequency comb based on a narrowband Yb-fiber oscillator: pre-chirp management for self-referenced carrier envelope offset frequency stabilization

Frequency comb based on a narrowband Yb-fiber oscillator: pre-chirp management for self-referenced carrier envelope offset frequency stabilization

3 GHz, fundamentally mode-locked, femtosecond Yb-fiber laser

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

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