Abstract

Regenerative amplifier systems arc attractive for various scientific and medical applications. The growing importance of these systems has led to a considerable advancement in reducing their sizes and costs, resulting in the demand for seed sources that are compact as well. A very attractive way to realise such a seed source for the important lμm wavelength range is presented in this work. It consists of a Nd-doped ZBLAN fluoride fiber laser which is carrier type mode-locked (CTM) by insertion of a saturable absorber (SA) into the cavity. The method of CTM mode-locking is self-starting and allows for a simple and compact set-up. The use of a fluoride host shifts the laser wavelength to a value in the range 1048-1052nm matching optimally the gain peaks of Nd:Glass and Nd:YLF regenerative amplifiers, which is not possible within a silica host.

© 1996 IEEE