Tunable Ti:Al2O3 oscillator optimized for high-repetition-rate and short pulses

TL;DR

This paper presents a tunable Ti:Al2O3 laser oscillator optimized for high-repetition-rate, ultra-short pulses suitable for multi-photon microscopy, achieving up to 270MHz repetition rate and pulse widths as short as 23fs.

Contribution

It introduces a laser design with prism-based dispersion compensation that achieves high repetition rates and tunable ultra-short pulses at different stability limits.

Findings

Achieved up to 270MHz repetition rate.

Produced pulse widths as short as 23fs.

Demonstrated tunability from 780nm to 920nm.

Abstract

A laser was designed and constructed with the goal of producing ultra-short pulses at a high repetition rate as needed for certain applications of multi-photon microscopy. With pure prism-based dispersion compensation repetition rates of up to 270MHz were achieved. The laser operates with hard- and soft-aperturing at the third (diverging output) and the first (parallel output) stability limits, respectively. At the third stability limit we found a pulse width of 27fs (FWHM) at 800nm central wavelength. At the first stability limit pulse widths of 23-40fs with tunability from 780nm to 920nm were reached.