Self-starting passively mode-locked femtosecond Cr/sup 4+/:YAG laser diode pumped by a Yb-fiber

Author

Lagatsky, A.A. ; Brown, C.T.A. ; Sibbett, W. ; Knox, W.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Phys. & Astron., Univ. of St. Andrews, UK

fYear

2002

fDate

24-24 May 2002

Firstpage

339

Abstract

Summary form only given. We report, what is to our knowledge, the first demonstration of the passively mode-locked compact femtosecond Cr:YAG laser that uses a diode-pumped Yb-doped fiber laser. We have designed a highly asymmetric four-mirror cavity Cr:YAG laser, using a saturable Bragg reflector (SBR) as the mode-locking device. The pump source was a 10 W single mode cw Yb-doped fiber laser operating at 1064 nm in a near-diffraction-limited beam. The gain medium was a 20 mm long Brewster-angled Cr:YAG crystal. Operation of this laser at average output powers of 100s mW around 1530 nm should be possible following optimization of the transmission of the output coupler.

Keywords

chromium; fibre lasers; laser cavity resonators; laser mode locking; optical pumping; solid lasers; ytterbium; 10 W; 1064 nm; 1530 nm; 20 mm; Brewster-angled Cr:YAG crystal; YAG:Cr; YAl5O12:Cr; diode-pumped Yb-doped fiber laser; gain medium; highly asymmetric four-mirror cavity Cr:YAG laser; mode-locking device; near-diffraction-limited beam; output coupler; saturable Bragg reflector; self-starting passively mode-locked femtosecond Cr/sup 4+/:YAG laser; Chromium; Diodes; Fiber lasers; Laser beams; Laser excitation; Laser mode locking; Optical design; Optical fiber couplers; Optical fiber devices; Pump lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics, 2002. CLEO '02. Technical Digest. Summaries of Papers Presented at the

Conference_Location

Long Beach, CA, USA

Print_ISBN

1-55752-706-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEO.2002.1034061

Filename

1034061