We experimentally reveal the pump-induced loss in a Ti:sapphire laser crystal with 451-nm indium gallium nitride (InGaN) laser diode pumping and show that 478-nm pumping can reduce such loss. The influence of the pump-induced loss at 451-nm pumping is significant even for a crystal that exhibits higher effective figure-of-merit and excellent laser performance at 520-nm pumping. We demonstrate the power scaling of a Ti:sapphire laser by combining 478- and 520-nm InGaN laser diodes and obtain CW output power of 593 mW.

We directly pumped a Ti:sapphire laser by combining 478 and 520 nm laser diodes to prevent the effect of absorption loss induced by the pump laser of shorter wavelengths (>450 nm). We obtain a continuous-wave output power of 660 mW at a total incident pump power of 3.15 W. We demonstrate mode locking using a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror, and 126 fs pulses were obtained at a repetition rate of 192 MHz. At the maximum pump power, the average output power is 315 mW. Shorter mode-locked pulses of 42 and 48 fs were respectively achieved by Kerr-lens mode locking with average output powers of 280 and 360 mW at a repetition rate of 117 MHz.

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