title: Diode-pumped, high-average-power femtosecond Cr3+ :LiCAF laser.
abstract: We demonstrate a high-average-power continuous wave (cw) and cw mode-locked Cr3+ :LiCAF laser pumped by broad-area laser diodes. In cw lasing experiments, up to 580 mW of output was obtained with 4.35 W of incident pump. A semiconductor saturable absorber mirror was used to initiate stable, self-starting, mode locking. In the cw mode-locked regime, the Cr3+ :LiCAF laser produced nearly transform-limited, 67 fs long pulses near 800 nm with an average output power of 300 mW. The pulse repetition rate was 120 MHz, with a pulse energy of 2.5 nJ.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Umit
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Demirbas
authors.forename: Alphan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sennaroglu
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Benedick
authors.forename: Aleem
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Siddiqui
authors.forename: Franz X
authors.initials: FX
authors.lastname: Kärtner
authors.forename: James G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Fujimoto