A widely tunable picosecond Ti:sapphire laser without any mechanical action

Summary form only given.Recently, we have demonstrated a widely electronically tunable subnanosecond Ti:sapphire laser pumped with a cw Q-switched LD-pumped Nd:YAG ]aser. The wavelength of the subnanosecond laser was continuously tuned by use of an intracavity acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) through the whole range of the laser gain. During tuning of the whole range, one needs to move a mirror to track change of the radio frequency (RF) applied to the AOTF. Here, we report what is, to our knowledge, the first operation of a cw widely tunable picosecond Ti:sapphire laser without any mechanical action. The laser wavelengths can be continuously tuned only by adjustment of the RF of an intracavity AOTF.