Sub-100-fs bulk solid-state lasers near 2-micron

Valentin Petrov; Yicheng Wang; Weidong Chen; Zhongben Pan; Yongguang Zhao; Li Wang; Mark Mero; Sun Young Choi; Fabian Rotermund; Won Bae Cho; Wei Jing; Hui Huang; Hualei Yuan; Huaqiang Cai; Lizhen Zhang; Zhoubin Lin; Pavel Loiko; Xavier Mateos; Xiaodong Xu; Jun Xu; Haohai Yu; Huaijin Zhang; Soile Suomalainen; Mircea Guina; Antti Härkönen; Uwe Griebner

doi:10.1117/12.2549618

20 December 2019 Sub-100-fs bulk solid-state lasers near 2-micron

Valentin Petrov, Yicheng Wang, Weidong Chen, Zhongben Pan, Yongguang Zhao, Li Wang, Mark Mero, Sun Young Choi, Fabian Rotermund, Won Bae Cho, Wei Jing, Hui Huang, Hualei Yuan, Huaqiang Cai, Lizhen Zhang, Zhoubin Lin, Pavel Loiko, Xavier Mateos, Xiaodong Xu, Jun Xu, Haohai Yu, Huaijin Zhang, Soile Suomalainen, Mircea Guina, Antti Härkönen, Uwe Griebner

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11209, Eleventh International Conference on Information Optics and Photonics (CIOP 2019); 112094G (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2549618
Event: Eleventh International Conference on Information Optics and Photonics (CIOP 2019), 2019, Xi'an, China

Abstract

Mode-locked lasers emitting ultrashort pulses in the 2-μm spectral range at high (100-MHz) repetition rates offer unique opportunities for time-resolved molecular spectroscopy and are interesting as pump/seed sources for parametric frequency down-conversion and as seeders of ultrafast regenerative laser amplifiers. Passively mode-locked lasers based on Tm³⁺- and Ho³⁺-doped bulk solid-state materials have been under development for about a decade. In 2009 we demonstrated the first steady-state operation of such a Tm:KLu(WO₄)₂ laser using a single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) saturable absorber (SA), generating 10-ps pulses at 1.95 μm. In 2012 this laser produced 141-fs pulses at 2.037 μm. More recently, the study of numerous active media with different SAs resulted in the generation of sub-100-fs (sub-10-optical-cycle) pulses. Materials with broad and smooth spectral gain profile were selected, naturally emitting above 2 μm to avoid water vapor absorption/dispersion effects, including anisotropic materials, strong crystal-field distortion in hosts that do not contain rare-earths, crystals with structural or compositional (i.e. mixed compounds) disorder that exhibit inhomogeneous line broadening, mixed laser ceramics, and Tm,Ho-codoping of ordered and disordered crystals and ceramics. A broad absorption band in semiconducting SWCNTs spans from 1.6 to 2.1-μm whereas the absorption of graphene extends into the mid-IR and scales for multilayers, increasing the modulation depth. Compared to GaSb-based semiconductor SA mirrors (SESAMs), the carbon nanostructures exhibit broader spectral response and can be fabricated by simpler and inexpensive techniques. Chirped mirrors were implemented for groupvelocity dispersion compensation, to generate the shortest pulses, down to 52 fs at 2.015 μm.

Citation Download Citation

Valentin Petrov, Yicheng Wang, Weidong Chen, Zhongben Pan, Yongguang Zhao, Li Wang, Mark Mero, Sun Young Choi, Fabian Rotermund, Won Bae Cho, Wei Jing, Hui Huang, Hualei Yuan, Huaqiang Cai, Lizhen Zhang, Zhoubin Lin, Pavel Loiko, Xavier Mateos, Xiaodong Xu, Jun Xu, Haohai Yu, Huaijin Zhang, Soile Suomalainen, Mircea Guina, Antti Härkönen, and Uwe Griebner "Sub-100-fs bulk solid-state lasers near 2-micron", Proc. SPIE 11209, Eleventh International Conference on Information Optics and Photonics (CIOP 2019), 112094G (20 December 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2549618

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