Highly compact femtosecond Cr/sup 3+/:LiSAF laser with a simplified cavity geometry

Summary form only given. Cost is a prohibitive factor for many potential applications of all-solid-state ultrashort pulse lasers. A significant proportion of the cost of available ultrashort pulse sources arises from the high power diode pump lasers. For a number of applications relatively modest peak powers are sufficient. Examples include time-resolved studies of the non-linearities in semiconductor waveguides and the characterisation of pulse measurement techniques. Low-cost, narrow-stripe, diffraction-limited laser diodes which do not require any beam shaping provide a potentially compact and inexpensive pump source for a femtosecond laser system. The power available from narrow-stripe laser diodes is low and our previous work has successfully demonstrated the reduction of the thresholds for stable femtosecond operation. We reported recently the low-threshold (21.5 mW) femtosecond operation of a Cr:LiSAF where up to 9 mW output power was produced using two 50 mW narrow-stripe pump diodes. The one drawback of this laser was that its overall footprint on an optical table was still quite large. Now we report the design and assessment of a more compact, low threshold laser cavity using a single prism for dispersion compensation.