Abstract

Solid-state lasers with small gain cross sections require a fast and low-loss saturable absorber for passive modelocking. Intracavity semiconductors introduce too much loss, have too small a saturation intensity and have problems withstanding the high intracavity peak intensities. One solution is to put the semiconductor inside a low-Q coupled cavity (RPM) [1,2]. An intracavity reactive nonlinearity, such as self-focusing, has been used to produce fast saturable-absorber-like modelocking that is, however, not self-starting [3,4,5,6]

© 1992 The Author(s)