Abstract

Progress in ultrafast lasers have made well-recognized strides in the last several years. Pulsewidths of ≈10 fs are now nearly routinely generated in the laboratory with argon-ion-pumped Ti:sap- phire.^1,2 Diode-pumping of solid-state crystals provides one key improvement in terms of lower-cost, robustly reliable ultrafast laser systems that would be suitable for instrument or industrial applications. A “solid-state" modelocking method is also highly desirable, and the discovery of Kerr-lens modelocking was a tremendous advance in this direction. Because of their versatility, semiconductors are also extremely promising materials for controlling laser performance. To circumvent the well-known disadvantageous properties of semiconductors, such as very low saturation energies and high non-saturating losses, we have been exploiting a device termed the antiresonant Fabry-Perot saturable absorber (A- FPSA),^3,4 which allows for fabrication of a nonlinear mirror to passively modelock, Q-switch, or Q-switch modelock solid-state lasers.

© 1995 IEEE