Abstract

Femtosecond squeezed-soliton can be generated in a self-phase modulation-controlled passive mode-locked dye laser.¹ This new kind of mode-locked dye laser was operated in our group. It is based on an anti-resonant ring colliding-pulse mode-locked dye laser with four intracavity prisms and two anti-resonant ring interferometers as two end reflectors of the cavity, which includes a Kerr nonlinear glass plate (SF57) in one anti-resonant ring, a saturable absorber (DODCI) jet in another and a gain (Rh6G) two jet between two curved reflecting mirrors in the middle of the cavity. The stability for the cavity is analyzed. It is found that when the average of all folded angles is between 6°and 8°, the stability regions are large enough for mode-locked operation and the stability regions vanish when the average is beyond 12°. In experiment, the laser is pumped with about 3.5W from an all-lines argon-ion laser. Very stable pulse trains with pulse width of 160 fs at 620 nm is obtained, and the spectral bandwidth is measured to be 2.8 nm. As a result, a femtosecond squeezed state with several dB noise reduction should be produced.

© 1993 Optical Society of America