Direct diode-laser pumping of a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser

Abstract

Direct diode-laser pumping of a mode-locked Ti:Al(2)O(3) laser is reported. A single 1 W GaN-based diode laser operating at 452 nm is used as the pump laser. Pulse durations as short as 114 fs and average output powers of up to 13 mW are obtained.

Optical trapping with “on-demand” two-photon luminescence using Cr:LiSAF laser with optically addressed saturable Bragg reflector

“…We believe, this method of optically addressing the SBR could be implemented in a Ti:sapphire laser with higher output powers [2] and pumped with blue laser diodes [8] to create a compact real-time multitasking platform for bio-photonics applications.…”

Power Scaling of Nonlinear Frequency Converted Tapered Diode Lasers for Biophotonics

“…One further advantage of using the direct output of diode lasers is that the typical relaxation oscillation frequency of diode lasers is in the GHz range and noise originating from relaxation oscillations will be filtered by the long excited state lifetime in Ti:sapphire crystals. Pumping with blue emitting diode lasers has been demonstrated recently [111], [112] and mode-locking of the Ti:sapphire laser has also been demonstrated [113], [114]. High power blue diode lasers are broad area lasers giving reduced beam quality in the slow axis of the laser, which might reduce the pump efficiency and also limits the modelocking capabilities.…”

Growth and spectroscopic properties of Ti-doped sapphire single-crystal fibers

“…This was followed by the direct diode-pumped KLM Ti:Al 2 O 3 lasers in the Refs. [8][9][10]. Indeed, such cost-effective Ti:Al 2 O 3 oscillator was used to perform multiphoton imaging by Young et al [11].…”