Femtosecond Yb:Lu(2)O(3) thin disk laser with 63 W of average power.
We present successful power-scaling of an Yb:Lu(2)O(3) thin disk laser to record high-power levels both in cw and mode-locked operation. In a simple multimode resonator we achieved 149 W of output power in cw operation with 73% optical-to-optical efficiency (eta(opt)). Building an 81 MHz fundamental transverse mode resonator with dispersion compensation and a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) for passive mode locking we achieved 63 W of average power in 535 fs pulses (eta(opt)=35%). The output beam is nearly diffraction limited (M(2)<1.2). The 0.78 microJ pulses with a peak power of 1.28 MW had a central wavelength of 1034 nm and were close to the Fourier transform limit. With an SESAM with a larger modulation depth we obtained pulses as short as 329 fs at 40 W average power corresponding to a pulse energy of 0.49 microJ and a peak power of 1.32 MW.
Baer
C R E
CR
Department of Physics, Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 16,8093 Zurich, Switzerland. cbaer@phys.ethz.ch
Kränkel
C
C
Saraceno
C J
CJ
Heckl
O H
OH
Golling
M
M
Südmeyer
T
T
Peters
R
R
Petermann
K
K
Huber
G
G
Keller
U
U