Abstract

Coupled cavity resonant passive modelocking (RPM) is a new simple technique to passively modelock laser media with a small gain saturation cross section such as a Ti:Sapphire, a Nd:YAG etc. laser. For these lasers the gain saturation is weak making intracavity saturable absorber modelocking problematic. Our RPM Ti:Sapphire laser without any dispersion compensation produces less than 10 ps pulses over a 50 nm wavelength range by simply turning the biréfringent plate inside the Ti:Sapphire laser (Fig. 1). Pulses as short as 2 ps FWHM were generated without intracavity chirp compensation.

© 1990 Optical Society of America