Colliding pulse mode-locked VECSEL

Declan Marah; Alexandre Laurain; Wolfgang Stolz; Stephan Koch; Antje Ruiz Perez; John McInerney; Jerome Moloney

doi:10.1117/12.2212902

10 March 2016 Colliding pulse mode-locked VECSEL

Declan Marah, Alexandre Laurain, Wolfgang Stolz, Stephan Koch, Antje Ruiz Perez, John McInerney, Jerome Moloney

Proceedings Volume 9734, Vertical External Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VECSELs) VI; 97340W (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2212902
Event: SPIE LASE, 2016, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Recent development of high power femtosecond pulse modelocked VECSEL with gigahertz pulse repetition rates sparked an increased interest from the scientific community due to the broad field of applications for such sources, such as frequency metrology, high-speed optical communication systems or high-resolution optical sampling. To the best of our knowledge, we report for the first time a colliding pulse modelocked VECSEL, where the VECSEL gain medium and a semiconductor saturable absorber (SESAM) are placed inside a ring cavity. This cavity geometry provides both a practical and an efficient way to get optimum performance from a modelocked laser system. The two counter propagating pulses in our ring cavity synchronize in the SESAM because the minimum energy is lost when they saturate the absorber together. This stronger saturation of the absorber increases the stability of the modelocking and reduces the overall losses of the laser for a given intra-cavity fluence, leading to a lower modelocking threshold. This also allows the generation of fundamental modelocking at a relatively low repetition rate (<GHz) with a higher output power compared to conventional VECSEL cavity. We obtained a total output power of 2.2W with an excellent beam quality, a pulse repetition rate of 1GHz and a pulse duration ranging from 1ps to 3ps. The emitted spectrum was centered at 1007nm with a FWHM of 3.1nm, suggesting that shorter pulses can be obtained with adequate dispersion compensation. The laser characteristics such as the pulse duration and stability are studied in detail.

Citation Download Citation

Declan Marah, Alexandre Laurain, Wolfgang Stolz, Stephan Koch, Antje Ruiz Perez, John McInerney, and Jerome Moloney "Colliding pulse mode-locked VECSEL", Proc. SPIE 9734, Vertical External Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VECSELs) VI, 97340W (10 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2212902

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available

Members: $17.00

Non-members: $21.00 ADD TO CART

PROCEEDINGS
6 PAGES

DOWNLOAD PAPER SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

GET CITATION

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Get copyright permission Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace

KEYWORDS

Mode locking

Mirrors

Absorption

Output couplers

Pulsed laser operation

Quantum wells

Semiconductors

Show All Keywords

Keywords/Phrases

Search In:

Publication Years