Editors' Picks Collection: Lasers

To honor its 40th Anniversary, the editors of Optics Letters selected articles from a variety of topic areas that reflect the progression of each area over the journal's history. Below is a collection of articles in the area of Lasers.

Note that this selection of articles is not meant to be exhaustive but authoritative, showing that significant contributions were made and continue to be made in this area.


  1. 60-fsec pulse generation from a self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser

    D. E. Spence, P. N. Kean, and W. Sibbett

    Opt. Letters 16(1) 42-44 (1991)

  2. Solid-state low-loss intracavity saturable absorber for Nd:YLF lasers: an antiresonant semiconductor Fabry-Perot saturable absorber

    U. Keller, D. A. B. Miller, G. D. Boyd, T. H. Chiu, J. F. Ferguson, and M. T. Asom

    Opt. Letters 17(7) 505-507 (1992)

  3. 77-fs pulse generation from a stretched-pulse mode-locked all-fiber ring laser

    K. Tamura, E. P. Ippen, H. A. Haus, and L. E. Nelson

    Opt. Letters 18(13) 1080-1082 (1993)

  4. Subfemtosecond pulses

    P. B. Corkum, N. H. Burnett, and M. Y. Ivanov

    Opt. Letters 19(22) 1870-1872 (1994)

  5. Compression of high-energy laser pulses below 5 fs

    M. Nisoli, S. De Silvestri, O. Svelto, R. Szipöcs, K. Ferencz, Ch. Spielmann, S. Sartania, and F. Krausz

    Opt. Letters 22(8) 522-524 (1997)

  6. Petawatt laser pulses

    M. D. Perry, D. Pennington, B. C. Stuart, G. Tietbohl, J. A. Britten, C. Brown, S. Herman, B. Golick, M. Kartz, J. Miller, H. T. Powell, M. Vergino, and V. Yanovsky

    Opt. Letters 24(3) 160-162 (1999)

  7. Sub-two-cycle pulses from a Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser

    U. Morgner, F. X. Kärtner, S. H. Cho, Y. Chen, H. A. Haus, J. G. Fujimoto, E. P. Ippen, V. Scheuer, G. Angelow, and T. Tschudi

    Opt. Letters 24(6) 411-413 (1999)

  8. Semiconductor saturable-absorber mirror–assisted Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser producing pulses in the two-cycle regime

    D. H. Sutter, G. Steinmeyer, L. Gallmann, N. Matuschek, F. Morier-Genoud, U. Keller, V. Scheuer, G. Angelow, and T. Tschudi

    Opt. Letters 24(9) 631-633 (1999)

  9. Generation of 5-fs pulses and octave-spanning spectra directly from a Ti:sapphire laser

    R. Ell, U. Morgner, F. X. Kärtner, J. G. Fujimoto, E. P. Ippen, V. Scheuer, G. Angelow, T. Tschudi, M. J. Lederer, A. Boiko, and B. Luther-Davies

    Opt. Letters 26(6) 373-375 (2001)

  10. 60-W average power in 810-fs pulses from a thin-disk Yb:YAG laser

    E. Innerhofer, T. Südmeyer, F. Brunner, R. Häring, A. Aschwanden, R. Paschotta, C. Hönninger, M. Kumkar, and U. Keller

    Opt. Letters 28(5) 367-369 (2003)

  11. Generation and characterization of the highest laser intensities (1022 W/cm2)

    S.-W. Bahk, P. Rousseau, T. A. Planchon, V. Chvykov, G. Kalintchenko, A. Maksimchuk, G. A. Mourou, and V. Yanovsky

    Opt. Letters 29(24) 2837-2839 (2004)

  12. 131 W 220 fs fiber laser system

    F. Röser, J. Rothhard, B. Ortac, A. Liem, O. Schmidt, T. Schreiber, J. Limpert, and A. Tünnermann

    Opt. Letters 30(20) 2754-2756 (2005)

  13. Generation of sub-three-cycle, 16TW light pulses by using noncollinear optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification

    Daniel Herrmann, Laszlo Veisz, Raphael Tautz, Franz Tavella, Karl Schmid, Vladimir Pervak, and Ferenc Krausz

    Opt. Letters 34(16) 2459-2461 (2009)

  14. Femtosecond fiber CPA system emitting 830 W average output power

    Tino Eidam, Stefan Hanf, Enrico Seise, Thomas V. Andersen, Thomas Gabler, Christian Wirth, Thomas Schreiber, Jens Limpert, and Andreas Tünnermann

    Opt. Letters 35(2) 94-96 (2010)

  15. Femtosecond thin-disk laser with 141 W of average power

    Cyrill Roman Emmanuel Baer, Christian Kränkel, Clara Jody Saraceno, Oliver Hubert Heckl, Matthias Golling, Rigo Peters, Klaus Petermann, Thomas Südmeyer, Günter Huber, and Ursula Keller

    Opt. Letters 35(13) 2302-2304 (2010)

  16. Octave-spanning frequency comb generation in a silicon nitride chip

    Yoshitomo Okawachi, Kasturi Saha, Jacob S. Levy, Y. Henry Wen, Michal Lipson, and Alexander L. Gaeta

    Opt. Letters 36(17) 3398-3400 (2011)

  17. Tailoring a 67 attosecond pulse through advantageous phase-mismatch

    Kun Zhao, Qi Zhang, Michael Chini, Yi Wu, Xiaowei Wang, and Zenghu Chang

    Opt. Letters 37(18) 3891-3893 (2012)

  18. Modeling of octave-spanning Kerr frequency combs using a generalized mean-field Lugiato-Lefever model

    Stéphane Coen, Hamish G. Randle, Thibaut Sylvestre, and Miro Erkintalo

    Opt. Letters 38(1) 37-39 (2013)

  19. Ultrafast thin-disk laser with 80 μJ pulse energy and 242 W of average power

    Clara J. Saraceno, Florian Emaury, Cinia Schriber, Martin Hoffmann, Matthias Golling, Thomas Südmeyer, and Ursula Keller

    Opt. Letters 39(1) 9-12 (2014)

  20. 260-megahertz, megawatt-level thin-disk oscillator

    Jinwei Zhang, Jonathan Brons, Nikolai Lilienfein, Elena Fedulova, Vladimir Pervak, Dominik Bauer, Dirk Sutter, Zhiyi Wei, Alexander Apolonski, Oleg Pronin, and Ferenc Krausz

    Opt. Letters 40(8) 1627-1630 (2015)