Self-mode-locking is a common way of generating very short laser pulses.12 It occurs when a beam self-focuses and narrows as it passes through a nonlinear intracavity material, thus expanding or contracting at other locations of the laser cavity.3 Since self-focusing is an intensity-dependent process, at any point in the cavity an intense (mode-locked) laser beam has a different size from a wea...

In this paper, we present the mode-locked operation of an ultra-robustly stabilised Nd:GdVO(4) laser with low repetition rate by combining quadratic polarisation switching and a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). In addition, similar experiment was also done with Nd:YVO(4). For Nd:GdVO(4), 16-ps pulses at 1063 nm with a repetition rate of 3.95 MHz have been obtained for a laser av...

A fundamentally mode-locked soliton Er-fiber laser generating 167 fs pulses at 194 MHz via polarization additive-pulse mode locking is demonstrated. This simple, compact, and high repetition rate source exhibits a low timing jitter of 18 fs [1 kHz, 10 MHz] and the lowest relative intensity noise of less than 0.003% [1 kHz, 10 MHz] observed from an Er-fiber laser.

It is shown that Kerr-lens mode locking of a Ti:sapphire laser, with no intracavity elements except the laser rod and the dispersion-compensating prisms, can be made to be completely self-starting. We achieve this result by carefully designing the resonator to maximize the nonlinear mode variations and dynamic loss modulation.

Self-starting, stable mode-locked pulses can be generated from a wavelength-swept laser through the interplay between an intracavity scanning filter and self-phase modulation. From an Er3+-doped fiber laser employing a scanning Fabry-Perot filter, 100 ps optical pulses are obtained at a 12-MHz repetition rate with center wavelengths that are swept over 27 nm around 1.55 microm in 1 ms.

We demonstrate the generation of nearly bandwidth-limited 8-fs optical pulses near 0.8 microm from a self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser oscillator, using chirped dielectric mirrors for dispersion control. The mode-locking performance is described, and limitations are discussed.

This paper reports the experimental characterization of the noise performance of monolithically integrated quantum dot and quantum well 10GHz passively mode locked laser diodes. Keywords-passive mode locking, quantum dot, quantum well,

Gaining of a high peak power in the visible light range from a solid state laser with continuous diode pumping is a challenging task in several applications (high-precision material processing, nonlinear optics and Raman-spectroscopy, medicine, etc.). The technique of modulating the Q-factor of laser cavity (Q-switch) enables growth of the peak power approximately as ┬sp / ┬ph (here ┬sp is the ...

Active-mode locking of semiconductor lasers has pro­ duced optical pulses as short as 0.58 ps.! This result was achieved using the positive portion of a 16 GHz sinusoid as an electrical drive signal. For many applications, such as electro-optic sampling, it is more useful to have the mode­ locked optical pulses at a much lower repetition rate. This requires an electrical drive source that produ...