Abstract

We report on a compact directly diode-pumped mode-locked femtosecond laser that produces pulses of more than 0.5 μJ energy at repetition rates around 10 MHz from a simple linear cavity. This results in high average powers of up to 5 W allowing for high processing speed which is essential for many industrial applications. We obtained pulses as short as 330 fs directly from the oscillator and demonstrated post-compression of these pulses down to 40 fs pulse duration.

© 2005 Optical Society of America