Subpicosecond kilowatt pulses from a mode-locked cw dye laser

Abstract

Subpicosecond pulses (0.5–1.0 psec) have been generated by passive mode locking of a composite medium dye laser. Both the gain medium and saturable absorber are placed in a single free-flowing dye stream located near the center of the resonator. Peak pulse powers of several kilowatts have been obtained by acousto-optically dumping the mode-locked pulses from the optical cavity at repetition rates up to 105 pps.