Pulse compression of a high-power thin disk laser using rod-type fiber amplifiers.
We report on two pulse compressors for a high-power thin disk laser oscillator using rod-type fiber amplifiers. Both systems are seeded by a standard SESAM modelocked thin disk laser that delivers 16 W of average power at a repetition rate of 10.6 MHz with a pulse energy of 1.5 μJ and a pulse duration of 1 ps. We discuss two results with different fiber parameters with different trade-offs in pulse duration, average power, damage and complexity. The first amplifier setup consists of a Yb-doped fiber amplifier with a 2200 μm2 core area and a length of 55 cm, resulting in a compressed average power of 55 W with 98-fs pulses at a repetition rate of 10.6 MHz. The second system uses a shorter 36-cm fiber with a larger core area of 4500 μm2. In a stretcher-free configuration we obtained 34 W of compressed average power and 65-fs pulses. In both cases peak powers of > 30 MW were demonstrated at several μJ pulse energies. The power scaling limitations due to damage and self-focusing are discussed.
Department of Physics, Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. saraceno@phys.ethz.ch
C J
CJ
Saraceno
O H
OH
Heckl
C R E
CR
Baer
T
T
Südmeyer
U
U
Keller
D000669:Amplifiers, Electronic; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D053844:Lasers, Solid-State