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Gigatera Ag

Daniel Kopf

Kurt J Weingarten

The optical component designed preferably for use in a laser cavity for the generation of a pulsed laser beam, especially a mode-coupled beam in the microsecond to the femtosecond range, contains a coating ensemble that acts as a saturable absorber, contains several layers, and is wave-coupled and &ldquo;etalon-free,&rdquo; having at least one saturable absorptive layer. The sequence of layers in the coating ensemble can be laid out such that for an incident cavity beam a negative dispersion of the group velocity (negative group delay dispersion and negative group velocity dispersion) also results. In the optical component which acts among other things as a saturable absorber and can be used as such, separate, individual, discrete optical elements need not be assembled in a sandwich-type construction with minimization. Instead, the optical component is a coating ensemble in which each individual layer, together with the remainder of the ensemble, contributes to the phase-coupled overall behavior of the incident beam. One or more layers which exhibit the saturable absorptive properties may be positioned in this ensemble, naturally allowing for phase-constant relations, such that an optimal, in this case a saturable absorptive, effect can be achieved.

Optical component for generating pulsed laser radiation

A passively mode-locked solid-state laser for emitting a continuous-wave train of electromagnetic-radiation pulses, the fundamental repetition rate of the emitted pulses exceeding 1 GHz, without Q-switching has an optical resonator, a solid-state laser gain element placed inside the optical resonator, an exciter for exciting said laser gain element to emit electromagnetic radiation having the effective wavelength, and a saturable absorber for passive mode locking. The laser gain element preferably consists of a laser material with a stimulated emission cross section exceeding 0.8&times;10 cm at the effective wavelength. Typically, the laser gain element is made of Nd:vanadate. The saturable absorber is preferably a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror device. The laser is simple, robust, compact, efficient, and low-cost. It generates a relatively large average power of 100 mW and higher, which is useful for a number of optical probing and detection applications, in a beam which is substantially a fundamental spatial mode.

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Zurich, Switzerland

Daniel Kopf