Abstract

Passively mode-locked, ultrafast and compact laser sources operating in the wavelength range beyond 2 µm have gained interest for several applications such as nonlinear frequency conversion into the mid-infrared and THz region, material processing, medicine etc. Typically, Ho-doped optical fibers (HDF) are used to directly address this spectral region in ultrafast mode-locked oscillators while Ho:YLF amplifier systems can boost the pulse energy to multi mJ-level, provided, the seed wavelength of the oscillator corresponds to the emission wavelength of the Ho:YLF crystal which is centered around 2051 nm with spectral bandwidth of about 5 nm.

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