Low-repetition-rate femtosecond operation in extended-cavity mode-locked Yb:CALGO laser

Dimitris N. Papadopoulos (1, 2) , Frédéric Druon (2) , Justine Boudeile (2) , Igor Martial (2) , Marc Hanna (2) , Patrick Georges (2) , Pierre-Olivier Petit (3) , Philippe Goldner (3) , Bruno Viana (3)

1 ILE - Institut de la Lumiére Extrême
2 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Elsa
3 LCMCP (site Paris VI) - Laboratoire de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Paris (site Paris VI)

We report on an extended-cavity mode-locked laser based on an Yb:CALGO crystal operating either at 27 MHz and 93 fs pulse duration or at 15 MHz and 170 fs duration single-pulse regime. To the best of our knowledge this is the first demonstration of an extended-cavity oscillator based on Yb-doped crystal produc- ing sub-100 fs pulses. The pulse energy was 24 nJ directly at the output of the oscillator (and 17 nJ after compression). Based on a similar design, we also demonstrate an unprecedented double-pulse dual- wavelength femtosecond regime. An explanation of this atypical regime is proposed.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Dimitris N. Papadopoulos, Frédéric Druon, Justine Boudeile, Igor Martial, Marc Hanna, et al.. Low-repetition-rate femtosecond operation in extended-cavity mode-locked Yb:CALGO laser. Optics Letters, 2009, 34 (2), pp.196-198. ⟨hal-00533141⟩