Abstract

New opportunities in laser design are being made possible by self-mode-locking, an effect first observed in a Ti:sapphire laser.¹ The effect is sometimes called Kerr-lens mode-locking because of the important role of the Kerr nonlinearity. Although the experimental demonstration of self-mode-locking has been quite successful, a complete theoretical understanding of the effect is lacking. In this paper, we use and compare two techniques to analyze the effects of the Kerr nonlinearity on the Ti:sapphire laser: (1) the ABCD method with a quadratic approximation to the Gaussian intensity profile, and (2) the split-step Fourier transform method, with and without saturated gain.

© 1993 Optical Society of America