Pulse energy scaling to 5 μJ from a femtosecond thin disk laser

Marchese, S. V.; Südmeyer, Thomas; Golling, Matthias; Grange, Rachel; Keller, U.

doi:10.1364/ol.31.002728

Cited by 76 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Especially for higher pulse energies, this may require to eliminate the nonlinearity resulting from the air in the resonator, e.g., by operating the laser in a helium atmosphere or vacuum. In this way, we prevent excessive self-phase modulation, which would otherwise destabilize the pulse formation [45]. The gain per cavity roundtrip can be increased by using a cavity setup with multiple passes through the gain medium.…”

Section: Expected Pulse Duration In the Thin Disk Configurationmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-power ultrafast thin disk laser oscillators and their potential for sub-100-femtosecond pulse generation

et al. 2009

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Ultrafast thin disk laser oscillators achieve the highest average output powers and pulse energies of any mode-locked laser oscillator technology. The thin disk concept avoids thermal problems occurring in conventional high-power rod or slab lasers and enables high-power TEM 00 operation with broadband gain materials. Stable and self-starting passive pulse formation is achieved with semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs). The key components of ultrafast thin disk lasers, such as gain material, SESAM, and dispersive cavity mirrors, are all used in reflection. This is an advantage for the generation of ultrashort pulses with excellent temporal, spectral, and spatial properties because the pulses are not affected by large nonlinearities in the oscillator. Output powers close to 100 W and pulse energies above 10 µJ are directly obtained without any additional amplification, which makes these lasers interesting for a growing number of industrial and scientific applications such as material processing or driving experiments in high-field science. Ultrafast thin disk lasers are based on a power-scalable concept, and substantially higher power levels appear feasible. However, both the highest power levels and pulse energies are currently only achieved with Yb:YAG as the gain material, which limits the gain bandwidth and therefore the achievable pulse duration to 700 to 800 fs in It is important to evaluate their suitability for power scaling in the thin disk laser geometry. In this paper, we review the development of ultrafast thin disk lasers with shorter pulse durations. We discuss the requirements on the gain materials and compare different Yb-doped host materials. The recently developed sesquioxide materials are particularly promising as they enabled the highest optical-tooptical efficiency (43%) and shortest pulse duration (227 fs) ever achieved with a mode-locked thin disk laser.

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Section: Expected Pulse Duration In the Thin Disk Configurationmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-power ultrafast thin disk laser oscillators and their potential for sub-100-femtosecond pulse generation

et al. 2009

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“…Therefore the intracavity levels are substantially higher than the output and can reach average powers in the kW range [5], pulse energies larger than 100 μJ, and peak powers exceeding 100 MW [23]. Thus the intracavity self-phase modulation (SPM) introduced by the ambient air in the cavity can become the main contribution to the total soliton phase shift [24]. In order to compensate for this phase shift and obtain stable soliton modelocking, large amounts of negative group delay dispersion are required.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

275 W average output power from a femtosecond thin disk oscillator operated in a vacuum environment

Saraceno¹,

Emaury²,

Heckl³

et al. 2012

Opt. Express

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194

150

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Abstract:We present an ultrafast thin disk laser that generates an average output power of 275 W, which is higher than any other modelocked laser oscillator. It is based on the gain material Yb:YAG and operates at a pulse duration of 583 fs and a repetition rate of 16.3 MHz resulting in a pulse energy of 16.9 μJ and a peak power of 25.6 MW. A SESAM designed for high damage threshold initiated and stabilized soliton modelocking. We reduced the nonlinearity of the atmosphere inside the cavity by several orders of magnitude by operating the oscillator in a vacuum environment. Thus soliton modelocking was achieved at moderate amounts of self-phase modulation and negative group delay dispersion. Our approach opens a new avenue for power scaling femtosecond oscillators to the kW level. 435-453 (1996). 19201-19208 (2010). Huber, and U. Keller, "High-power ultrafast thin disk laser oscillators and their potential for sub-100-femtosecond pulse generation," Appl. Published in OpticsExpress 20, issue 21, 23535-23541, 2012 which should be used for any reference to this

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“…Thin disk lasers enable the required average power with excellent beam quality, such that passive mode locking with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) can be achieved. Using this concept, we have recently been able to reach a pulse energy as high as 5.1 µJ at 12 MHz repetition rate from an Yb:YAG thin disk oscillator [1]. This significant increase over previous results was made possible by realizing the importance of the nonlinearity of air inside a thin disk laser cavity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 88%

Passively mode-locked thin disk lasers reach 10 microjoules pulse energy at megahertz repetition rate and drive high field physics experiments

Marchese

Hashimoto

Baer

et al. 2007

2007 European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and the International Quantum Electronics Conference

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The direct generation of high energy pulses with a diode-pumped solid-state laser oscillator is a promising approach to enable the multi-megahertz operation of numerous applications in science and industry. Thin disk lasers enable the required average power with excellent beam quality, such that passive mode locking with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) can be achieved. Using this concept, we have recently been able to reach a pulse energy as high as 5.1 µJ at 12 MHz repetition rate from an Yb:YAG thin disk oscillator [1]. This significant increase over previous results was made possible by realizing the importance of the nonlinearity of air inside a thin disk laser cavity. To eliminate the air's contribution to the nonlinearity, we covered the laser with a box which then was flooded with helium.Here we present a further increase in pulse energy to 11 µJ. We extended the existing 40.7 MHz laser cavity presented in [1] to a total of 37 m, by inserting a 23.4 m long multiple-pass cavity (MPC) and a simple 4f extension using curved mirrors with 5000 mm radius of curvature. This resulted in a repetition rate of 4 MHz, at which we achieved an average power of 45 W when operated in the box flooded with helium. The sech 2 -shaped pulses had a FWHM-duration of 791 fs and a spectral bandwidth of 1.56 nm (Fig. 1), resulting in a time-bandwidth product of 0.35 (Fourier-limit: 0.315). The beam quality was nearly diffraction-limited with an M 2 -value of 1.1 (measured at 9.4 µJ).We further demonstrate the first use of a passively mode-locked thin disk laser for experiments in high field science, and present photoelectron imaging spectroscopy experiments done at multi-megahertz repetition rate. For this experiment, the output pulses of the thin disk laser were temporally compressed using a microstructured large mode area (LMA) fiber and a single prism pair as described in [2]. Fig. 1Autocorrelation and optical spectrum (inset) of the output pulses (left). The dashed curves represent a sech 2 -fit with a pulse of 791 fs duration and an optical bandwidth of 1.56 nm. Photoelectron spectrum of xenon measured at the maximum laser intensity of 6·10 13 W/cm 2 (right).The thin disk laser was operated at a repetition rate of 14 MHz and an average power of 17 W, such that the nonlinearity of air could still be compensated for by the dispersive mirrors and flooding with helium was therefore not required. The output pulses after the fiber compression had a duration of 35 fs and were focused with a parabolic mirror (f = 30 mm) into the xenon gas in the photoelectron imaging spectrometer. A static electric field projects the photoelectrons from the xenon ionization onto a micro channel plate (MCP) with a phosphor screen attached. The fluorescence on the screen resulting from the electron impact allows the measurement of the energy and angular momentum distribution of the photoelectrons. The photoelectron images, obtained by adding together the signals from more than 10 9 laser pulses, were captured with a computer-based CCD...

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Pulse energy scaling to 5 μJ from a femtosecond thin disk laser

Cited by 76 publications

References 18 publications

High-power ultrafast thin disk laser oscillators and their potential for sub-100-femtosecond pulse generation

High-power ultrafast thin disk laser oscillators and their potential for sub-100-femtosecond pulse generation

275 W average output power from a femtosecond thin disk oscillator operated in a vacuum environment

Passively mode-locked thin disk lasers reach 10 microjoules pulse energy at megahertz repetition rate and drive high field physics experiments

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