title: Femtosecond Yb:Lu(2)O(3) thin disk laser with 63 W of average power.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 16,8093 Zurich, Switzerland. cbaer@phys.ethz.ch
authors.forename: C R E
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Baer
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kränkel
authors.forename: C J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Saraceno
authors.forename: O H
authors.initials: OH
authors.lastname: Heckl
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Golling
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Südmeyer
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Petermann
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Huber
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Keller