title: Diode-pumped passively mode-locked GHz femtosecond Cr:LiSAF laser with kW peak power.
abstract: We report a single-mode diode-pumped, passively mode-locked Cr:LiSAF laser with gigahertz (GHz) repetition rate and kilowatt peak power. A low-loss saturable Bragg reflector with low modulation depth and optimized dispersion compensation mirrors enables the generation of stable, cw mode-locked, sub-100-fs pulses at 1 GHz repetition rate around 865 nm when pumping with four or six laser diodes. Using a 0.25% output coupler and a total absorbed pump power of 0.9 W from six laser diodes, 55 fs, 110 pJ pulses are produced. This corresponds to 1.8 kW of peak power, which to our knowledge represents a record result for GHz Cr:colquiriite lasers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Duo
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Umit
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Demirbas
authors.forename: Jonathan R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Birge
authors.forename: Gale S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Petrich
authors.forename: Leslie A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Kolodziejski
authors.forename: Alphan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sennaroglu
authors.forename: Franz X
authors.initials: FX
authors.lastname: Kärtner
authors.forename: James G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Fujimoto