Abstract

The recent development of nonresonant passive modelocking techniques has stimulated considerable interest in the generation of ultrashort optical pulses from broadband solid state laser media. Self-modelocking [1] is now routinely exploited to generate sub-100 fs pulses from solid state lasers in the near infrared. Optimization of a solitonlike interplay between negative group delay dispersion (GDD) and self-phase modulation (SPM), and minimization of high-order dispersive perturbations [2] have resulted in sub-20 fs pulse generation from Ti:sapphire lasers [3 - 6]. In particular, the minimisation of the cubic phase distortion arising from intracavity prism pairs has resulted in the generation of exceptionally broad modelocked spectra with FWHM of up to 150 nm and pulse durations ≈ 10 fs [7].

© 1994 Optical Society of America