Compact 120 TW Ti: sapphire laser system with a high gain final amplifier

A 120TW/36fs laser system based on Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) has been successfully established in our lab. The final four pass Ti:sapphire amplifier pumped by an energetic single-shot Nd:YAG-Nd:glass laser was designed and optimized. With 24J/8ns pump energy at 532 nm, 300 mJ/220 ps chirped pulse was amplified to 5.98 J in this amplifier, and a total saturated gain of similar to 20 was achieved. The focused intensity of compressed beam could reach to 10(20) W/cm(2) with the M-2 of similar to 2.0. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Conical emission of Ti : sapphire femtosecond laser pulses propagating in water

Conical emission is investigated for Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser pulses propagating in water. The colored rings can be observed in the forward direction due to the constructive and destructive interference of transverse wavevector, which are induced by the spatio-temporal gradient of the free-electron density. With increasing input laser energy, due to filamentation and pulse splitting induced by the plasma created by multiphoton excitation of electrons from the valence band to the conduction band, the on-axis spectrum of the conical emission is widely broadened and strongly modulated with respect to input laser spectrum, and finally remains fairly constant at higher laser energy due to intensity clamping in the filaments.

Generation of 17-TW 23-fs pulses with a two-stage Ti : Sapphire amplifier at repetition rate 10 Hz

We have developed a two-stage Ti:sapphire amplifier system which can produce 17-TW/23-fs pulses at a repetition rate 10 MHz. A birefringent plate is used in the regenerative amplifier to alleviate gain narrowing, while an all-reflective cylindrical-mirror-based pulse stretcher and an acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (AOPDF) are used to compensate for the higher order dispersion of the system.

Parasitic lasing suppression in high gain femtosecond petawatt Ti: sapphire amplifier

New parasitic lasing suppression techniques are developed and high gain amplification is demonstrated in a petawatt level Ti:sapphire amplifier based on the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) scheme. Cladding the large aperture Ti: sapphire with refractive-index matched liquid doped with absorber suppresses the transverse lasing. The acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (AOPDF) is used to realize side-lobe suppression in the temporal profile of the compressed pulse. The 800 nm laser output with peak power of 0.89 PW and pulse width of 29.0 fs is demonstrated. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.

Coherence measurement of a Ti:sapphire femtosecond pulsed laser

The interference patterns produced by Gaussian-shaped broad-bandwidth femtosecond pulsed laser sources are derived. The interference pattern contains both spatial and temporal properties of laser beam. Interference intensity dependent on the bandwidth of femtosecond laser are given. We demonstrate experimentally both the spatial and the temporal coherence properties of a Ti:sapphire femtosecond pulse laser, as well as its power spectrum by using a pinhole pair.

Modified porous silica antireflective coatings with laser damage resistance for Ti:sapphire

Porous SiO2 antireflective (AR) coatings are prepared from the colloidal silica solution modified with methyltriethoxysilane (MTES) based on the sol-gel route. The viscosity of modified silica suspensions changes but their stability keeps when MTES is introduced. The refractive indices of modified coatings vary little after bake treatment from 100 to 150 Celsius. The modified silica coatings on Ti:sapphire crystal, owning good homogeneity, display prominent antireflective effect within the laser output waveband (750-850 nm) of Ti:sapphire lasers, with average transmission above 98.6%, and own laser induced damage thresholds (LIDTs) of more than 2.2 J/cm2 at 800 nm with the pulse duration of 300 ps.

All solid-state, injection-seeded Ti:sapphire ring laser

In this letter, we present an all solid-state, injection-seeded Ti:sapphire laser. The laser is pumped by a laser diode pumped frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser, and injection-seeded by an external cavity laser diode with the wavelength between 770 and 780 nm. The single longitude mode and the doubling efficiency of the laser are obtained after injection seeding. The experimental setup and relative results are reported. It is a good candidate laser source for mobile differential absorption lidar (DIAL) system.

Experimental study of Ti : sapphire laser end-pumped Nd : YAG ceramic laser Q-switched by Cr4+: YAG saturable absorber

By employing a continuous-wave (CW) Ti:sapphire tunable laser as a pumping source and a Cr4+:YAG single crystal as the saturable absorber (SA), a passively Q-switched Nd:YAG ceramic laser has been demonstrated at room temperature. With an absorbed pumping power of 541 mW at 808 nm, an average output power of 61 mW at 1064 nm has been obtained with 3.5 mu J pulse energy, 15 ns pulse width and 18.18 kHz repetition rate, and the corresponding slope-efficiency is 15%. The relationships between the pulse width, repetition rate, average output power, pulse energy, and peak power on the absorbed pumping power for different initial transmission of the Cr4+:YAG SA are discussed separately. The Nd:YAG ceramic is one of the most promising laser materials for compact, efficient, all-solid-state pulsed lasers.

Growth of composite sapphire/Ti : sapphire by the hydrothermal method

Composite sapphire/Ti:sapphire crystals for high-power laser application were grown by the hydrothermal method. The results of the X-ray rocking curve analysis indicate high crystalline quality of the surface Al2O3 material. The strong bonding between the overgrown Al2O3 and seed Ti:Al2O3 crystals is indispensable for withstanding high thermal stresses produced by intense optical pumping. The optical loss at the boundary of the composite crystal is considerably low, indicating the lack of scattering centers. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Ti:sapphire laser pumped high average power laser crystal Nd:GGG with high efficiency output

High-quality neodymium doped GGG laser crystals have been grown by Czochralski (Cz) method. Results of Nd:GGG thin chip laser operating at 1.064 μm pumped by Ti:sapphire laser operating at 808 nm were reported. The slop efficiency was as high as 20%.

Newly designed multilayer thin film mirror for dispersion compensation in Ti:sapphire femtosecond lasers

There are two different effects to generate group delay dispersion by multilayer thin film mirrors: chirper effect and Gires-Tournois effect. Both effects are employed to introduce desired dispersion in the designed mirror. Thus the designed mirror provides large dispersion throughout broad waveband. Such mirror can be used for dispersion compensation in Ti:sapphire femtosecond lasers. Most group delay dispersion of a 5-mm Ti:sapphire crystal can be compensated perfectly with only four bounces of the designed mirror.

Negative dispersion mirrors in Ta2O5/: SiO2 for femtosecond Ti : Sapphire lasers by using gires-tournois interferometers

We design and experimentally demonstrate some negative dispersion mirrors with optimized Gires-Tournois interferometers. The mirror structure is composed of 38 alternating Ta2O5 and SiO2 layers and could be regarded as two sections: high-reflectivity section consisting of a series of quarter-wavelength optical thickness stacks and negative-dispersion section consisting of only 13 layers. The designed mirrors exhibit the expected performance. These mirrors were fabricated by using ion beam sputtering. By adopting such mirrors, dispersion of a mode-locked femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser has been compensated for mostly. With two series of the mirrors, 32 fs and 15 fs pulses have been obtained respectively.

Self-starting mode-locked femtosecond Ti : sapphire laser using saturable, Bragg reflector(SBR)

Stable self-starting mode-locking states in a compact Ti: sapphire laser incorporating a home-made SBR with low loss double quanturn-well and low temperature and surface state hybrid absorber are investigated experimentally. The three mode-locking states, i.e. the passive mode-locking with a saturable absorber, the solition mode-locking and the Kerr-lens mode-locking have been successfully demonstrated. In this laser, chirped mirrors are used for dispersion compensation, and the 18 fs pulses are produced from the Kerr-lens mode-locking at 4.5W pump power, and output power is 150mW.