Abstract

High-average-power, high repetition-rate pulse sources, needed for applications such as optical sampling and telecommunications, require a pulsed master oscillator, often boosted by an ytterbium-doped fibre power amplifier (YDFA). Soliton Yb fibre lasers can achieve ~100-pJ sub-ps pulses at repetition rates up to 1.5 GHz, but harmonic mode-locking gives rise to timing jitter of -10 ps between adjacent pulses. An 82-GHz pulse train from a fundamental-mode-locked Nd:YV0₄ laser has been amplified to 9.8 W average power, and used to pump an OPO; however the pulse duration was limited to >3ps. A Stark-mode-locked vertical-extemal-cavity surface-emitting semiconductor laser (VECSEL) by contrast can provide low jitter sub-ps pulses at multi-GHz repetition rates [1]: the VECSEL-YDFA is a highly versatile and power- scalable source [2]. Here we describe sources of this type with ~1 W average power and repetition rate up to 6 GHz.

© 2007 IEEE