January 2017
Spotlight Summary by Esa Saarinen
Pulse interactions in a colliding pulse mode-locked vertical external cavity surface emitting laser
Laser light that circulates in two counter-propagating beams helps form robust and short pulses at very high pulse repetition rates. The method, known as colliding pulse mode-locking, has recently been demonstrated with a vertical-external-cavity semiconductor laser (VECSEL). VECSELs are lasers that can emit pulses at repetition rates even beyond 100 GHz. Here, Laurain and colleagues set a new milestone for pulse duration and power from this type of a laser and present a comprehensive analysis of what happens when the two beams circulate in different directions inside the laser cavity. In particular, they show that the interference of the beams leads to a periodic intensity pattern on cavity mirrors. This helps to initiate pulses with an intensity-dependent reflector. Moreover, the beams tend to balance one another and synchronize in time. As a result, short and stable pulses appear more easily than in a regular laser. The demonstrated combination of high pulse repetition rate and high peak power can boost the speed and quality of many nonlinear imaging and optical sampling techniques.
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Article Information
Pulse interactions in a colliding pulse mode-locked vertical external cavity surface emitting laser
Alexandre Laurain, Robert Rockmore, Hsiu-Ting Chan, Jorg Hader, Stephan W. Koch, Antje Ruiz Perez, Wolfgang Stolz, and Jerome V. Moloney
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 34(2) 329-337 (2017) View: HTML | PDF