R. Paschotta, C. Spuhler, J. Aus der Au, Keller, M. Moser, S. Erhard, M. Karszewski, A. Giesen
{"title":"Power-scalable femtosecond thin disk Yb:YAG lasers","authors":"R. Paschotta, C. Spuhler, J. Aus der Au, Keller, M. Moser, S. Erhard, M. Karszewski, A. Giesen","doi":"10.1109/CLEOE.2000.909662","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We present a new concept which allows to build femtosecond lasers with very high average output powers. It is based on a thin disk Yb:YAG laser, passively mode-locked with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). In a first step, we obtained 16 W of average power in near transform-limited soliton pulses with 730 fs duration, 0.47 /spl mu/J energy, 560 kW peak power, and near diffraction-limited beam quality. Damage of the SESAM is not observed, and Q-switching instabilities are suppressed at full output power. The average power of 16 W is to our knowledge by far the highest reported for a laser oscillator in the subpicosecond regime, and we are working towards even significantly higher powers.","PeriodicalId":250878,"journal":{"name":"Conference Digest. 2000 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe (Cat. No.00TH8505)","volume":"18 7","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2000-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Conference Digest. 2000 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe (Cat. No.00TH8505)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1109/CLEOE.2000.909662","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We present a new concept which allows to build femtosecond lasers with very high average output powers. It is based on a thin disk Yb:YAG laser, passively mode-locked with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). In a first step, we obtained 16 W of average power in near transform-limited soliton pulses with 730 fs duration, 0.47 /spl mu/J energy, 560 kW peak power, and near diffraction-limited beam quality. Damage of the SESAM is not observed, and Q-switching instabilities are suppressed at full output power. The average power of 16 W is to our knowledge by far the highest reported for a laser oscillator in the subpicosecond regime, and we are working towards even significantly higher powers.