光学
激光器
二极管
材料科学
模式锁定
光电子学
物理
作者
Firas Trawi,Jakub Drs,Michael Müller,Marin Hamrouni,Valentin J. Wittwer,Thomas Südmeyer
出处
期刊:Optics Express
[The Optical Society]
日期:2024-10-04
卷期号:32 (21): 37897-37897
摘要
Ytterbium (Yb)-doped materials are an excellent choice for efficient and powerful ultrafast lasers. They exhibit favorable emission properties, which include a low quantum defect and compatibility with cost-effective high-power pump diodes. While being strongly beneficial for efficiency, the low quantum defect is a challenge for operation in the few-cycle regime. In the standard collinear pumping scheme, the optical pump light passes a dichroic mirror, whose spectral transmission and dispersion properties can substantially perturbate the oscillating broad-band pulse. Recently, we introduced a broadband cross-polarization pumping scheme that avoids this issue and enables significant improvements in optical-to-optical efficiency and output average power of modelocked few-cycle Yb-bulk laser oscillators. However, our initial prototype relied on a high-power, diffraction-limited fiber laser for pumping. Here, we demonstrate that the broadband cross-polarization pumping scheme is also well-suited for cost-effective multimode diode pumping of Kerr-lens modelocked Yb-bulk lasers. In doing so, we developed a hard-aperture Kerr-lens modelocked Yb:CALGO bulk laser oscillator delivering ultrashort pulses in the sub-30 fs regime. We present two configurations, which both operate at 85 MHz repetition rate. The first delivers 22-fs pulses at 0.3 W of average output power with a 4% optical-to-optical efficiency, while the second produces 28-fs pulses at 0.5 W of average power with a 12% optical-to-optical efficiency. This study validates the high potential of cross-polarization pumping for cost-effective, high-efficiency Yb-lasers operating in the few-cycle regime, achieving shorter pulse durations and higher power levels than previously demonstrated for multimode diode pumping.
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