High-power femtosecond vortices generated from a Kerr-lens mode-locked solid-state Hermite–Gaussian oscillator

Abstract

We report the generation of high-order transverse modes from a Kerr-lens mode-locked femtosecond laser. Two different orders of Hermite–Gaussian modes were realized by non-collinear pumping, which were converted into the corresponding Laguerre–Gaussian vortex modes using a cylindrical lens mode converter. The mode-locked vortex beams, with an average power of 1.4 W and 0.8 W, contained pulses as short as 126 fs and 170 fs at the first and second Hermite–Gaussian mode orders, respectively. This work demonstrates the possibility of developing Kerr-lens mode-locked bulk lasers with various pure high-order modes and paves the way for generating ultrashort vortex beams.