Ultrashort pulse generation

摘要

Since 1990 we have observed tremendous progress in short and ultrashort pulse generation using solid-state lasers (Figure 1). Until the end of the 1980s, ultrashort pulse generation was dominated by dye lasers (Shank 1988) which produced pulses as short as 27fs with a typical average output power and repetition rate of about 10mW and 100MHz respectively. Shorter pulse durations, down to 6fs, were achieved only through additional amplification and fibre-grating pulse compression at much lower repetition rates. Flashlamp-pumped solid-state lasers typically produced pulse durations of approx approx 100ps with Nd:YAG and approx approx 30ps with Nd:YLF using active modelocking (Figure 2).