Saturable absorber mirrors for ytterbium mode-locked femtosecond lasers

Abstract

We present a femtosecond, diode-pumped Yb:KYW laser configured with a range of saturable absorber mirrors, both commercially available and state-of-the-art structures. The laser performance is characterized for different output couplers (OC) transmissionfor the typically used OC transmission between 0.5-10% the laser power increases with the increasing transmission but the spectrum gets narrower at the same time, resulting in longer pulses and the laser pulse peak power having a maximum.