Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Mayer, A S
• Phillips, C R
• Keller, U

Titel

Watt-level 10-gigahertz solid-state laser enabled by self-defocusing nonlinearities in an aperiodically poled crystal

Ist Teil von

• Nature communications, 2017-11, Vol.8 (1), p.1673-8, Article 1673

Ort / Verlag

England: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Femtosecond modelocked lasers with multi-gigahertz pulse repetition rates are attractive sources for all applications that require individually resolvable frequency comb lines or high sampling rates. However, the modelocked laser architectures demonstrated so far have several issues, including the need for single-mode pump lasers, limited output power, Q-switching instabilities and challenging cavity geometries. Here, we introduce a technique that solves these issues. In a two-dimensionally patterned quasi-phase-matching (QPM) device, we create a large, low-loss self-defocusing nonlinearity, which simultaneously provides SESAM-assisted soliton modelocking in the normal dispersion regime and suppresses Q-switching induced damage. We demonstrate femtosecond passive modelocking at 10-GHz pulse repetition rates from a simple straight laser cavity, directly pumped by a low-cost highly spatially multimode pump diode. The 10.6-GHz Yb:CaGdAlO (Yb:CALGO) laser delivers 166-fs pulses at 1.2 W of average output power. This enables a new class of femtosecond modelocked diode-pumped solid-state lasers with repetition rates at 10 GHz and beyond.