We present preliminary results showing the potential of VECSEL technology for the generation of high power coherent supercontinuum. Among these results, we demonstrate a stable output power of 16 W with a pulse duration of 71 fs and a repetition rate of 1.7 GHz from a VECSEL oscillator and Ytterbium fiber amplifier. This system was used to generate a coherent supercontinuum averaging 3 W of power using a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber. In addition, we discuss the possible methods for the detection and stabilization of the carrier offset frequency. The beatnote between a VECSEL seeded supercontinuum and an external CW laser reveals a relatively stable signal, well above the detection noise. A discussion about system design considerations for noise reduction and increased offset frequency stability is also included.
Here we present the gain and SESAM structure design strategy employed for the demonstration of ultrashort pulses and we present a comprehensive study outlining the influence of the cavity geometry on the pulse duration and peak power achievable with a state of the art VECSEL and SESAM structure. We will discuss the physical mechanisms limiting the output power with near 100fs pulses and we will compare experimental results obtained with different cavity geometries, including a V-shaped cavity, a multi-fold cavity, and a ring cavity in a colliding pulse modelocking scheme. The experimental results are supported by numerical simulations.
We present a novel Vertical External Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VECSEL) cavity design which makes use of multiple interactions with the gain region under different angles of incidence in a single round trip. This design allows for optimization of the net, round-trip Group Delay Dispersion (GDD) by shifting the GDD of the gain via cavity fold angle while still maintaining the high gain of resonant structures. The effectiveness of this scheme is demonstrated with femtosecond-regime pulses from a resonant structure and record pulse energies for the VECSEL gain medium. In addition, we show that the interference pattern of the intracavity mode within the active region, resulting from the double-angle multifold, is advantageous for operating the laser in CW on multiple wavelengths simultaneously. Power, noise, and mode competition characterization is presented.
We present a comprehensive characterization of semiconductor gain and absorber devices utilizing novel measurement techniques. Using a 20fs probe laser, a time resolution in the few femtosecond range is achieved in traditional pump and probe measurements performed on VECSELs and SESAMs. In-situ characterizations of VECSEL samples mode-locked in the sub-500fs regime reveal the fast and longtime recoveries of the gain present in real lasing conditions. Spectrally-resolved probing gives further information about the properties of carriers in VECSEL gain media. Our results indicate that stable mode-locked operation is sustained by multiple carrier relaxation mechanisms ranging from a few femtoseconds to the pico- and nanosecond regimes.
While Vertical-External-Cavity-Surface-Emitting-Lasers (VECSELs) have been successfully used as ultrafast laser sources with pulse durations in the hundreds of femtosecond regime, the dynamics within the semiconductor gain structure are not yet completely understood. With the high carrier densities inside the semiconductor, nonequilibrium effects such as kinetic-hole burning are expected to play a major role in pulse formation dynamics. Moreover, the nonlinear phase change by the intense light field can induce a complex dispersion, which may potentially limit the achievable pulse durations. To shed light on such nonequilibrium dynamics, we perform in-situ characterization of mode-locked VECSELs. We probe the gain media as well as the intracavity absorber with a femtosecond fiber laser source. For measuring temporal characteristics, we employ an asynchronous optical sampling technique by phase-locking the repetition rate of the VECSEL to a multiple of the probe laser with an adjustable offset frequency. This allows for probing dynamics from femtosecond to nanosecond time scales with scan rates up to hundreds of Hertz without compromise of measurement precision which can be introduced by mechanical delays covering such large temporal windows. With a resolution in the femtosecond range, we characterize gain depletion by the intracavity pulse as well as the gain recovery timescales for different power levels and operation regimes.
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