Pulse shortening of an ultrafast VECSEL

D. Waldburger; C. G. E. Alfieri; S. M. Link; E. Gini; M. Golling; M. Mangold; B. W. Tilma; U. Keller

doi:10.1117/12.2209251

10 March 2016 Pulse shortening of an ultrafast VECSEL

D. Waldburger, C. G. E. Alfieri, S. M. Link, E. Gini, M. Golling, M. Mangold, B. W. Tilma, U. Keller

Proceedings Volume 9734, Vertical External Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VECSELs) VI; 973409 (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2209251
Event: SPIE LASE, 2016, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Ultrafast, optically pumped, passively modelocked vertical external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) are excellent sources for industrial and scientific applications that benefit from compact semiconductor based high-power ultrafast lasers with gigahertz repetition rates and excellent beam quality. Applications such as self-referenced frequency combs and multi-photon imaging require sub-200-fs pulse duration combined with high pulse peak power. Here, we present a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) modelocked VECSEL with a pulse duration of 147 fs and 328 W of pulse peak power. The average output power was 100 mW with a repetition rate of 1.82 GHz at a center wavelength of 1034 nm. The laser has optimal beam quality operating in a fundamental transverse mode with a M² value of <1.05 in both orthogonal directions. The VECSEL was grown by metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) with five pairs of strain-compensated InGaAs quantum wells (QWs). The QWs are placed symmetrical around the antinodes of the standing electric field at a reduced average field enhancement in the QWs of ≈ 0.5 (normalized to 4 outside the structure). These results overcome the trade-off between pulse duration and peak power of the state-of-the-art threshold values of 4.35 kW peak power for a pulse duration of 400 fs and 3.3 W peak power for a pulse duration of 107 fs.

Citation Download Citation

D. Waldburger, C. G. E. Alfieri, S. M. Link, E. Gini, M. Golling, M. Mangold, B. W. Tilma, and U. Keller "Pulse shortening of an ultrafast VECSEL", Proc. SPIE 9734, Vertical External Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VECSELs) VI, 973409 (10 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2209251

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