title: Self-starting 6.5-fs pulses from a Ti:sapphire laser.
abstract: We demonstrate self-starting 6.5-fs pulses from a Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser with 200-mW average output power at a pulse repetition rate of ~86 M Hz. This is to our knowledge the shortest pulse ever generated directly from a laser. For dispersion compensation we used a prism pair in combination with double-chirped mirrors, which balances the higher-order dispersion of the prism pair and therefore flattens the average total group-delay dispersion in the laser cavity. For self-starting mode locking we used a broadband semiconductor saturable-absorber mirror.
authors.forename: I D
authors.initials: ID
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.forename: F X
authors.initials: FX
authors.lastname: Kärtner
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Matuschek
authors.forename: D H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Sutter
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Morier-Genoud
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Scheuer
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tilsch
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tschudi