Abstract

We report a new mode-locking technique, which greatly extends the number of dyes that can be used as saturable absorbers. When the absorber is enclosed in a high-Q transverse resonator its lifetime is reduced by stimulated emission to values that are sufficiently short to ensure complete recovery between passes. The technique has been demonstrated using rhodamine 6G for the amplifier and cresyl violet for the saturable absorber. In addition to its use for mode locking visible dye lasers, the technique also shows great promise for locking ultraviolet excimer lasers, such as krypton fluoride and xenon chloride lasers, using a visible dye for the slow saturable absorber.

© 1978 Optical Society of America

Experimental verification of soliton mode locking using only a slow saturable absorber

I. D. Jung, F. X. Kärtner, L. R. Brovelli, M. Kamp, and U. Keller
Opt. Lett. 20(18) 1892-1894 (1995)

Hidden mechanism for mode locking solid-state lasers by use of a slow off-resonant saturable absorber

J. Herrmann and M. Müller
Opt. Lett. 20(9) 994-996 (1995)

Gain balance of pulses and noise in passive mode locking with slow saturable absorber

Michael Katz, Baruch Fischer, and Omri Gat
Opt. Lett. 34(15) 2267-2269 (2009)

Self-starting stretched-pulse fiber laser mode locked and stabilized with slow and fast semiconductor saturable absorbers

M. Guina, N. Xiang, A. Vainionpää, O. G. Okhotnikov, T. Sajavaara, and J. Keinonen
Opt. Lett. 26(22) 1809-1811 (2001)

Ultrashort pulses generated by mode-locked lasers with either a slow or a fast saturable-absorber response

N. N. Akhmediev, A. Ankiewicz, M. J. Lederer, and B. Luther-Davies
Opt. Lett. 23(4) 280-282 (1998)