Abstract

Ultrafast optical pulses at a wavelength ~800 nm have a number of scientific applications, including the study of carrier-relaxation processes in III-V semiconductor material systems. Such pulses are also being used as seed pulses for solid-state laser amplifiers such as Ti:sapphire, which has a gain bandwidth >450 nm. Although 800-nm pulses as short as 50 fs have been demonstrated using colliding-pulse, passive, mode-locking techniques,¹ generation of such short pulses using synchronously pumped, hybrid mode-locking has remained elusive, mainly because the commonly used saturable absorber at this wavelength (HITC-I) has a long recovery time (1.1 ns).

© 1991 Optical Society of America