Abstract

Ultrafast 2-μm lasers are of interest for applications in medicine, material processing [1] and as drivers for mid-IR optical parametric frequency converters [2]. Recently a sub-picosecond operation of Ho:YAG chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system was realized by extending the amplified pulse spectrum over two emission peaks centered at 2090 nm and 2096 nm [3], which required strong adaptive spectral shaping of the seed pulse to equalize spectral amplitude gain. In addition, dispersion management of the CPA was complicated due to the resonant spectral phase distortion and could only be accomplished by using an acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (DAZZLER). The most intense emission line of Ho:YAG is centered at 2090 nm, and, without compensation of gain narrowing, supports amplified bandwidth of >1.5 nm corresponding to <4 ps pulses, an attractive pulse duration for the above-mentioned applications.

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