Dual picosecond dye lasers synchronously pumped by a mode locked cw yag laser

The performance of a novel dual dye laser system synchronously pumped by the frequency doubled output of a mode-locked CW-YAG laser is evaluated in relation to pulsewidth, pulse substructure, pulse spectral width and timing jitter. The behavior of the system is adequately described by a theoretical model which includes the time dependent gain and losses due to frequency bandwidth, cavity length mismatch and output coupler. The jitter is significantly reduced from that obtained with CW gas laser pumping as a result of the shorter pump pulse (50 ns instead of ≈100 ps). A routine operating condition uses 2-plate birefringen filters, 0.8 W pump power at 532 nm, to yield two 2.0 ps pulses having a cross correlation width of 3.8 ps, and 30 mW average power from each laser.     

Fluctuations in synchronously mode-locked dye lasers

We present detailed experimental data on random fluctuations of the pulse properties of a cw rhodamine 6G dye laser synchronously pumped by an acousto-optically mode-locked argon ion laser. It is shown that quantitative information about the fluctuations of the energy, the pulse repetition time and the duration of the pulses can be obtained from the power spectrum of the laser intensity which is measured with the use of an electronic spectrum analyser. This method is capable of revealing small, subpicosecond temporal pulse jitter. We show that the dye laser pulses exhibit an absolute r.m.s. jitter of 20 ps which is induced by the pump laser. The relative jitter in a dual system can be less than 1 ps because well defined correlations of the output fluctuations exist when two lasers are pumped by a common source.     

Experimental study of parabolic bound pulses from an Er-doped fiber ring laser

We have experimentally observed various bound states of parabolic pulses in a passively mode-locked Erbium-doped fiber ring laser. Beyond the mode-locking threshold, stable single parabolic pulse with the duration of 3.29 ps has been obtained and compressed outside the cavity to 253 fs assuming a sech² profile. By increasing the pump power and rotating the polarization controllers, stable bound states of two parabolic pulses with a fixed separation of 6.5 ps has been obtained. Further increasing the pump power and carefully adjusting the intracavity PCs, multiple bound pulses have also been observed in the same cavity with the same pulse separation.     

Synthetic hologram made by variable magnification imaging system

For the purpose of improving the utilization efficiency of the gain bandwidth of active media and generating stable ultrashort light pulses, a passive-active mode locking technique has been applied to a cw Rhodamine 6G dye laser. A sufficient ability of this technique for the elimination of the multiple-pulse operation of the mode locking at a higher pumping level and a longer resonator length has been proved. Observed pulse-width by the SHG autocorrelation technique is 1.4 ps with assuming a sech² pulse profile.     

Pulse structure studies and absolute cavity length determination for a synchronously pumped picosecond dye laser

Second harmonic cross correlation functions of a pulse with its near neighbor have been studied in a synchronously pumped cw dye laser. Measurements were made both as a function of dye laser cavity length mismatch and the number of cavity round trips separating the correlated pulses. The pulse envelope is found to have a characteristic interpulse frequency determined by the pump laser, whereas the pulse substructure has a characteristic frequency determined by the dye laser cavity length. The cross correlation measurements allow experimental determination of the dye laser length corresponding to exact synchrony. In contrast to theoretical predictions the length of exact synchrony corresponds to optimum pulse shape and duration. Our results are discussed in terms of a simple model which leads to pulse duration estimates as much as twice those obtained by conventional analysis of autocorrelation traces.     

Simple generation of 400–700 nm picosecond dye laser pulses with nanosecond laser pumping

New results in the experimental study of the spectro-temporal selection (STS) method to produce picosecond dye laser pulses are presented. Adjustability of the picosecond pulse wavelength, possibility of extension of the STS method to different dyes and to UV pump wavelength, stability of the output pulse duration and intensity, and the concentration effect on pulse duration, are reported for the first time. From these results, production of high power picosecond (50–100 ps) dye laser pulses spectrally adjustable between 400 and 700 nm is obtained with a standard nanosecond pump laser, in a compact and simple device.     

同步泵浦PML飞秒激光研究

采用CW锁模YAG倍频激光器同步泵浦PML飞秒染料激光器,产生了平均脉宽约55fs、功率为15mW的光脉冲。文章在理论和实验上还研究了同步泵浦飞秒激光脉冲产生技术。     

Analysis of a laser-diode end-pumped intracavity frequency-doubled passively Q-switched and mode-locked Nd:GdVO<Subscript>4</Subscript>/KTP laser with a semiconductor saturable absorber

A diode-pumped passively Q-switched mode-locked (QML) intracavity frequency-doubled Nd:GdVO₄/KTP green laser with a semiconductor saturable absorber is presented. Nearly 100% modulation depth for the mode-locked green pulses can be achieved at any pump power over 1.92 W. The width of the mode-locked green pulse was estimated to be about 150 ps. The mode-locked pulse interval within the Q-switched envelope of 320 ns and the repetition rate of 97.5 kHz were obtained, at an incident pump power of 4.4 W. The repetition rate of the mode-locked green pulses inside the Q-switched envelope was 140 MHz.     

Low Loss All-Silicon Single Mode Optical Waveguide with Small Cross-Section

An experimental investigation is presented for obtaining picosecond (ps) pulses at a repetition rate of 11 GHz using a fiber laser coupled to an external cavity. Without applying active mode locking and without a nonlinear element in the coupled cavity, pulses of about 15 ps with an average power of 20 mW have been generated using a (cw) diode pump laser. The pulse duration decreases with increasing repetition rate.     

High Repetition Rate Fiber Laser Coupled to a Linear Cavity Generating Picosecond Pulses

An experimental investigation is presented for obtaining picosecond (ps) pulses at a repetition rate of 11 GHz using a fiber laser coupled to an external cavity. Without applying active mode locking and without a nonlinear element in the coupled cavity, pulses of about 15 ps with an average power of 20 mW have been generated using a (cw) diode pump laser. The pulse duration decreases with increasing repetition rate.     

Theory and experiment of CW dye laser injection locking and its application to second harmonic generation

High-power single-mode operation of a cw ring dye laser has been obtained by injection of cw single-mode radiation. The intracavity power of this system was used to generate tunable single-mode uv radiation by frequency doubling in a temperature phase-matched ADA crystal: up to 45 W intracavity fundamental power and up to 70 mW extracted uv power have been observed. A theoretical treatment of the injection locked cw ring dye laser system is given for the stationary state. Expressions for the intracavity intensities as a function of the small-signal gain and the saturation intensity are derived.     

Laser intracavity absorption spectroscopy

Emission spectra of multimode lasers are very sensitive to spectrally selective extinction in their cavity. This phenomenon allows the quantitative measurement of absorption. The sensitivity of measurements of intracavity absorption grows with the laser pulse duration. The ultimate sensitivity obtained with a cw laser is set by various perturbations of the light coherence, such as quantum noise, Rayleigh scattering, four-wave mixing by population pulsations, and stimulated Brillouin scattering. It depends on the particular laser type used, and on its operative parameters, for example pump power, cavity loss, cavity length, and length of the gain medium. Nonlinear mode-coupling dominates the dynamics of lasers that feature a thin gain medium, such as dye lasers, whereas Rayleigh scattering is more important in lasers with a long gain medium, such as doped fibre lasers, or the Ti:sapphire laser. The highest sensitivity so far has been obtained with a cw dye laser. It corresponds to 70000 km effective length of the absorption path. The ultimate spectral resolution is determined by the spectral width of mode emission, which is 0.7 Hz in this dye laser. High sensitivity and high temporal and spectral resolution allow various practical applications of laser intracavity spectroscopy, such as measurements and simulations of atmospheric absorption, molecular and atomic spectroscopy, process control, isotope separation, study of free radicals and chemical reactions, combustion diagnostics, spectroscopy of excited states and nonlinear processes, measurements of gain and of spectrally narrow light emission. Intracavity absorption in single-mode lasers shows enhanced sensitivity as well, although not as high as in multimode lasers. Received: 10 May 1999 / Published online: 29 July 1999     

Diode-Pumped Passively Mode-Locked 1079 nm Nd:CaGdAlO_4 Laser

We demonstrate a diode-pumped passively cw mode-locked NdiCaGdAlO_4 laser operating at 1079 nm with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror for the first time to the best of our knowledge.The threshold pump power of the laser is 180 mW.A maximum average output power of 93 mW is obtained under the pump power of1.94 W.The pulse duration of the mode-locked pulses is 3.1 ps and the repetition rate is 157 MHz.     

Analysis of laser-diode end-pumped intracavity frequency-doubled,passively Q-switched and mode-locked Nd:YVO<Subscript>4</Subscript> laser

Simultaneous Q-switching and mode locking in a laser-diode end-pumped intracavity frequency-doubled Nd:YVO₄/KTP green laser using a Cr⁴⁺:YAG saturable absorber with 81% initial transmission is experimentally demonstrated. At an incident pump power of 6 W, 300 mW of average green power was obtained, which is around four times higher than the cw green power obtained without the Cr⁴⁺:YAG crystal. The repetition rate of the mode-locked green pulses was 400 MHz and the individual mode-locked pulse width was measured to be 500 ps. The repetition rate of the Q-sw itched envelope of the mode-locked pulses was 15 kHz at 6 W of incident pump power. The energy of the mode-locked pulse at the peak of the Q-sw itched envelope was estimated to be 1 J and the peak power was estimated to be 2.4 kW. The measured width and the total energy of the Q-sw itched envelope of the mode-locked pulses was 47 ns and 21 J, respectively, at the maximum incident pump power. An analysis of the system by incorporating a nonlinear loss term due to the intracavity second-harmonic generation to the general recurrence relation for the mode-locked pulses under the Q-sw itched envelope at the fundamental wavelength has been presented. Using a hyperbolic secant square function to model the mode-locked pulse, the temporal shape of a single Q-sw itched pulse at the second-harmonic wavelength has been reconstructed. The theoretical calculations of the pulse parameters like pulse energy, peak power, pulse width and pulse-symmetry factor have shown fairly good agreement with the experimental results. PACS 42.55.Rz; 42.55.Xi; 42.60.By     

Characteristics of a hybridly mode-locked cw dye laser

We present experimental and theoretical results on the characteristics and random variations of subpicosecond pulses generated by a synchronously pumped cw dye laser with saturable absorber. The analysis of the power spectra indicates rapid fluctuations of the pulse duration of 40–50%, energy fluctuations of 3%, and a jitter of the repetition time of 0.1% corresponding to an absolute jitter of 12 ps. The latter is caused mainly by the temporal jitter of the pump laser. A mismatch of the lengths of the dye and the pump-laser cavity can result in a nonstationary mode-locking regime with a periodic change of the pulse parameters. The interpretation of the experimental results are supported by computer simulations of the pulse evolution process.     

Theory of synchronously pumped dye lasers

An analysis of cw synchronously pumped dye lasers is presented. Under the assumption that the cavity (tuning element) bandwidth is much wider than the bandwidth of the transform limited pulses generated, the pulse forming dynamics is rigorously treated. It is shown that for a finite mismatch between the lengths of the dye and the pump lasers, a steady-state pulse develops in the dye laser cavity with a conserved pulseshape. The characteristics (energy, shape, peak power, duration) of these pulses of ultimate width are quantitatively determined as a function of cavity mismatch. An analytical solution for the pulse envelope is determined, which yieldsI(t)∝Sech²(t/t _p ) to a good approximation.     

Study of synchronously mode-locked and internally frequency-doubledcw dye laser

The analysis of the characteristics of a synchronously mode-locked and internally frequency-doubled dye laser is presented. Dependence of dye laser pulse characteristics on the cavity length mismatch of the pump laser and dye laser is studied. Variation of the minimum pulsewidth with intracavity bandwidth and the harmonic conversion efficiency is presented in the form of graphs.     

Narrow linewidth,short pulse operation of a nitrogen-laser-pumped dye laser

Subnanosecond pulses, of 0.02 Å bandwidth, are generated by a nitrogen-laser-pumped dye laser with intracavity double prism beam expander, and holographic diffraction grating. Pulsewidths to below 450 ps, with peak powers greater than 10 kW, are obtained from 200 kW, 3.5 ns pumping pulses.     

A long-pulse xenon ion laser as a pumping source for dye lasers

A simple xenon ion laser that is either sealed or has a gas flow mode is described. The laser delivered long pulses ( 15 μs) of almost 1 kW peak power. It has been used to pump a dye laser employing the same configuration as cw dye lasers. The system is inexpensive and can be mode-locked, enabling it to yield ultrashort pulses comparable in duration to those delivered by cw argon laser-pumped dye lasers but with much higher peak powers.     

Near-infrared subpicosecond pulse generation in a synchronously mode-locked cw dye laser

Tunable subpicosecond pulses have been obtained from a synchronously mode-locked Oxazine-1 dye laser by tandem pumping with output pulses of a mode-locked Rhodamine 6G dye laser. The effects of cavity detuning on the pulse-width and the second harmonic power (the peak intensity of the autocorrelation trace) have been investigated. The experimental results are found to be in good agreement with those predicted by a recent model analysis.