Passively mode-locked diode-pumped Nd:YVO4 oscillator operating at ultra-low repetition rate

Dimitris N. Papadopoulos (1) , Sébastien Forget (1) , Martin Delaigue (1) , Frédéric Druon (1) , François Balembois (1) , Patrick Georges (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Elsa

We demonstrate the operation of an ultralow-repetition-rate, high-peak-power, picosecond diode-pumped Nd:YVO4 passively mode-locked laser oscillator. Repetition rates lower than 1 MHz were achieved with the use of a new design for a multiple-pass cavity and a semiconductor saturable absorber. Long-term stable operation at 1.2 MHz with a pulse duration of 16.3 ps and an average output power of 470 mW, corresponding to 24-kW peak-power pulses, is reported. These are to our knowledge the lowest-repetition-rate high-peak-power pulses ever generated directly from a picosecond laser resonator without cavity dumping

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Dimitris N. Papadopoulos, Sébastien Forget, Martin Delaigue, Frédéric Druon, François Balembois, et al.. Passively mode-locked diode-pumped Nd:YVO4 oscillator operating at ultra-low repetition rate. Optics Letters, 2003, 28 (19), pp.1838-1840. ⟨hal-00686988⟩