image: Schematic representation of the DKLM Yb:YAG thin-disk oscillator. A wedged Yb:YAG thin disk with a thickness of ~0.1 mm and a ROC of -20 m was used as the gain medium. It was placed inside a 36-pass pump cavity as a folding mirror and pumped by a fiber-coupled diode laser at 940 nm. The resulting pump beam size on the disk was 2.5 mm in diameter. A set of nonlinear plates were inserted close to the OC, including one YAG plate and five sapphire plates. The cavity length was ≈740 mm, corresponding to a repetition rate of 203 MHz. HR: high-reflection mirror; HD: high-dispersion mirrors; OC: output coupler; KM: Kerr medium (sapphire plate); H: hard aperture; R1 and R2: concave mirrors with ROC of -150 mm and -50 mm, respectively. view more
Credit: Ultrafast Science
Ultrafast laser oscillators are indispensable tools for diverse applications in scientific research and industry. When the phases of the longitudinal laser cavity modes are locked, pulses as short as a few femtoseconds can be generated.
As most high-power oscillators are based on narrow-bandwidth materials, the achievable duration for high-power output is usually limited. Here, Jinwei Zhang et al. present a distributed Kerr-lens mode locked Yb: YAG thin-disk oscillator which generates sub-50 fs pulses with spectral widths far broader than the emission bandwidth of the gain medium at full-width-at-half-maximum.
Simulations were also carried out, indicating good qualitative agreement with the experimental results. The proof-of-concept study shows that this new mode-locking technique is pulse-energy and average-power scalable and applicable to other types of gain media, which may lead to new records in the generation of ultrashort pulses.
Journal
Ultrafast Science
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Distributed Kerr Lens Mode-Locked Yb:YAG Thin-Disk Oscillator
Article Publication Date
4-Jan-2022