Demonstration of a Ti:sapphire mode-locked laser pumped directly with a green diode laser

Abstract

We demonstrate a Ti:sapphire laser pumped directly with a green diode laser. A single 1 W InGaN diode laser operating at 518 nm is used as the pump source. Pulse durations as short as 62 fs and average output powers of up to 23.5 mW are obtained with chirped-mirror-based dispersion compensation and a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM).