Mode-locked Lasers

Over the years, I had the opportunity to participate in several works to study different types of mode-locked lasers.

1 µm fully stabilized Kerr lens mode-locked laser

In this work, we demonstrated a 1 µm Kerr-lens mode-locked laser based on ytterbium-doped CALGO delivering 3.5 W average power in 44 fs long pulses at 1 GHz repetition frequency. Stabilization of the laser allowed us to obtain a fully referenced frequency comb with 2.7 W average power available for direct applications [OE-23].

Figure : Schematic of the full experimental setup used to generate and stabilize the 1 µm Kerr lens mode-locked laser with a repetition frequency of 1 GHz [OE-23].

NOLM based fibered lasers

Nonlinear optical loop mirrors (NOLM) are interesting tools to develop mode-locked fibered lasers. Here, we studied how to optimally design NOLM based mode-locked fibered lasers by shaping the transfer function of the NOLM using a coupler with tunable ratio and a tunable bandpass optical filter [OL-21].

Figure : Schematic of a NOLM based laser architecture [OL-21].

References

[OE-23] Michael Müller, Marin Hamrouni, Kenichi N. Komagata, Alexandre Parriaux, Valentin J. Wittwer, and Thomas Südmeyer, “Powerful 1-µm 1-GHz optical frequency comb,” Optics Express 31.26, 44823-44831 (2023).
DOI: 10.1364/OE.511564

[OL-21] A. Malfondet, A. Parriaux, K. Krupa, G. Millot, and P. Tchofo-Dinda, “Optimum design of NOLM-driven mode-locked fiber lasers,” Optics Letters 46.6, 1289-1292 (2021).
DOI: 10.1364/OL.418281