Design, construction and characterisation of a diode-pumped, three-element, 1-GHz Kerr-lens-modelocked Ti:sapphire oscillator

Abstract

Abstract We report a 1-GHz repetition rate Ti:sapphire laser pumped with a single green pump diode, producing 111-fs pulses and exhibiting self-starting Kerr-lens modelocking at pump powers above 850 mW. At 1.1W of pump power, the average output of the laser is over 116 mW, and the slope efficiency of the laser is measured to be 13%. The optimisation of the cavity dispersion has demonstrated a possible shortening of the pulses up to 87 fs with an average power of 108 mW. The relative intensity noise of the laser was measured to be 0.06%, and the phase error of the repetition rate after locking to a reference has been measured to be 1.7 mrad, corresponding to timing jitter of 270 fs.