Abstract

We demonstrate a selfstarting, passively modelocked short cavity Cr⁴⁺:YAG laser which supports fundamental intracavity transform-limited solitons over wide ranges of cavity group velocity dispersion and pulse energies. The total dispersion and nonlinear effects per round trip are small enough that stable, N=1 solitons are generated. Equally spaced multiple pulsing is also observed with fundamental soliton behavior preserved. Regions of bistability exist where, at a constant cavity dispersion, the laser generates transform- limited pulses of different widths and energies. The laser produces 200 fs pulses at approximately 0.9, 1.8 and 2.7 GHz repetition rates and a total of 82 mW of average output power.

© 1997 Optical Society of America