Picosecond pulse generation and its simulation in a nonlinear optical mirror mode-locked laser.
A nonlinear mirror composed of a lithium triborate crystal and a dichroic output coupler is used to passively mode lock an Nd:YVO4 laser that is pumped by a diode laser array. A mode-locked output power of 3.2 W, a repetition rate of 178 MHz, a pulse width of 8.4 ps, and a beam quality parameter (M2) of 1.27 are obtained at 1064 nm for a pump power of 10.0 W. The numerical simulation for the steady-state pulse width agrees well with the bandwidth-limited value. A double-pass average gain g(ave) is defined by considering the constancy of the output energy. In the simulation g(ave) is kept as a free parameter, and its value required for the bandwidth-limited pulse is found to be 0.047, whereas its calculated value, based on our definition, is 0.057.
Datta
Prasanta Kumar
PK
Department of Physics and Meteorology, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721 302, India. pkdatta@phy.iitkgp.ernet.in
Shivanand
Mukhopadhyay
Sourabh
S
Agnesi
Antonio
A
Lucca
Andrea
A