Femtosecond oscillators based on Yb:SrF2 and Yb:CaF2

Author

Friebel, F. ; Druon, F. ; Boudeile, J. ; Papadopoulos, D.N. ; Hanna, M. ; Camy, P. ; Doualan, J.L. ; Benayad, A. ; Moncorgé, R. ; Cassagne, C. ; Boudebs, G. ; Georges, P.

Author_Institution

Lab. Charles Fabry de l´´Inst. d´´Opt., Univ. Paris-Sud, Palaiseau, France

fYear

2009

fDate

14-19 June 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

1

Abstract

Yb-doped calcium fluoride crystals have been demonstrated to be a very good candidate for the development of diode-pumped femtosecond lasers. In this paper, the development of short pulse oscillators based on Yb:CaF₂ and Yb:SrF₂ is presented. One challenge when developing short-pulsed oscillators with Yb-doped fluorides concerns the fact that they exhibit very long upper state life time (2.4 ms for Yb:CaF₂ and 2.9 ms Yb:SrF₂) which counteract the stable modelocked operation in favour of Q-switch operation. Particular femtosecond modelocked regimes are studied in order to demonstrate sub-100-fs stable regime with Yb:CaF₂ and femtosecond operation with Yb:SrF₂ for the first time.

Keywords

Q-switching; calcium compounds; laser mode locking; optical pulse generation; optical pumping; strontium compounds; ytterbium; CaF₂:Yb; Q-switch; SrF₂:Yb; diode pumping; femtosecond mode locking; short pulse oscillators; time 2.4 ms; time 2.9 ms; upper state life time; Calcium; Crystals; Diodes; Laser modes; Optimized production technology; Oscillators; Pulse generation; Pulse measurements; Stability; Tunable circuits and devices;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics 2009 and the European Quantum Electronics Conference. CLEO Europe - EQEC 2009. European Conference on

Conference_Location

Munich

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4079-5

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-4080-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEOE-EQEC.2009.5194644

Filename

5194644