A novel scheme to achieve mode-locking of a multimode laser is demonstrated. Traditional methods to produce ultrashort laser pulses are based on modulating the cavity gain or losses at the cavity roundtrip frequency, favoring the pulsed emission. Here, we rather directly act on the phases of the modes, resulting in constructive interference for the appropriated phase relationship. This was perf...

Ultrafast laser sources have garnered considerable attention for their many potential applications, ranging from meteorology to telecommunications, medicine, and materials processing. Most of these lasers employ a mode-locking technique in which a nonlinear optical element, called a saturable absorber,turns the laser's continuous wave output into a train of ultrashort optical pulses. Currently,...

Sub-picosecond optical pulses have been successfully generated using a novel monolithic passive colliding pulse mode-locked (CPM)l semiconductor multiple quantum-well (MQW) laser. Transform-limited pulse width of 830 femto-seconds is achieved at a wavelength of 1.5pm and a repetition rate of 80 GHz. The measured timebandwidth product is 0.31. A record high repetition rate of 350 GHz is also dem...

An Erbium doped fiber laser oscillator emitting at 1560nm is developed. The laser is mode-locked with saturable absorber based on nonlinear polarization rotation. The measured cw threshold power is about 70mW and the power scaling efficiency is 13%. The maximum output power obtained is 40mW. The mode-locking is self starting and the stability is verified in millisecond, microsecond and nanoseco...

A typical self-mode-locked vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser must operate at the edge of stable region resonant cavity. Its minimal pump spot on gain chip is used as a soft aperture. By comparing with continuous-wave (CW) laser, pulsed focused more tightly due to Kerr-lens effect. This mitigates cavity loss in comparison CW such that successive mode-locking can be initiated. The d...

We present a novel technique to frequency lock a laser to an optical cavity. This technique, tilt locking, utilizes a misalignment of the laser with respect to the cavity to produce a non-resonant spatial mode. By observing the interference between the carrier and the spatial mode, a quantum noise limited frequency discriminator can be obtained. Tilt locking offers a number of potential benefit...

A Q-switched Nd:YAG laser has been actively mode-locked at a subharmonic frequency for the first time, to authors’ knowledge. The operation mode is provided by combination of traveling wave acousto-optic modulator and spherical cavity mirror. dynamics generation investigated. Pulses with duration 70 ps peak power about 10 MW were obtained. Also presented are new results on obtaining high-power ...

We demonstrate the first 1.7 μm bismuth-doped fiber laser generating ultrashort pulses via passive mode-locking. Pulse operation has been achieved for both anomalous and normal dispersion of the laser cavity owing to broadband characteristics of carbon nanotube saturable absorber. The laser delivered 1.65 ps pulses in net anomalous dispersion regime. In normal dispersion regime, the laser deliv...