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Südmeyer, Thomas
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Südmeyer, Thomas
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thomas.sudmeyer@unine.ch
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Voici les éléments 1 - 10 sur 33
- PublicationAccès libreCarrier-envelope offset frequency stabilization of a thin-disk laser oscillator operating in the strongly self-phase modulation broadened regime
; ; ; ; ;Gürel, Kutan ;Kränkel, Christian; ;Wittwer, Valentin JWe demonstrate the carrier-envelope offset (CEO) frequency stabilization of a Kerr lens mode-locked Yb:Lu2O3 thin-disk laser oscillator operating in the strongly self-phase modulation (SPM) broadened regime. This novel approach allows overcoming the intrinsic gain bandwidth limit and is suited to support frequency combs from sub-100-fs pulse trains with very high output power. In this work, strong intra-oscillator SPM in the Kerr medium enables the optical spectrum of the oscillating pulse to exceed the bandwidth of the gain material Yb: Lu2O3 by a factor of two. This results in the direct generation of 50-fs pulses without the need for external pulse compression. The oscillator delivers an average power of 4.4 W at a repetition rate of 61 MHz. We investigated the cavity dynamics in this regime by characterizing the transfer function of the laser output power for pump power modulation, both in continuous-wave and mode-locked operations. The cavity dynamics in mode-locked operation limit the CEO modulation bandwidth to ~10 kHz. This value is sufficient to achieve a tight phase-lock of the CEO beat via active feedback to the pump current and yields a residual in-loop integrated CEO phase noise of 197 mrad integrated from 1 Hz to 1 MHz. - PublicationAccès libreBroadband terahertz pulse generation driven by an ultrafast thin-disk laser oscillator
;Clément, Paradis; ; ;Razskazovskaya, Olga ;Meyer, Frank ;Kränkel, Christian ;Saraceno, Clara J ;Wittwer, Valentin JWe demonstrate broadband THz generation driven by an ultrafast thin-disk laser (TDL) oscillator. By optical rectification of 50-fs pulses at 61 MHz repetition rate in a collinear geometry in crystalline GaP, THz radiation with a central frequency at around 3.4 THz and a spectrum extending from below 1 THz to nearly 7 THz are generated. We realized a spectroscopic characterization of a GaP crystal and a benchmark measurement of the water-vapor absorption spectrum in the THz range. Sub-50-GHz resolution is achieved within a 5 THz bandwidth. Our experiments show the potential of ultrafast TDL oscillators for driving MHz-repetition-rate broadband THz systems. - PublicationAccès libreCarrier-envelope offset stabilization of a GHz repetition rate femtosecond laser using opto-optical modulation of a SESAM
; ;Wittwer, Valentin J ;Gürel, Kutan ;Mayer, Aline S; We demonstrate, to the best of our knowledge, the first carrier-envelope offset (CEO) frequency stabilization of a GHz femtosecond laser based on opto-optical modulation (OOM) of a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). The 1.05-GHz laser is based on a Yb:CALGO gain crystal and emits sub-100-fs pulses with 2.1-W average power at a center wavelength of 1055 nm. The SESAM plays two key roles: it starts and stabilizes the mode-locking operation and is simultaneously used as an actuator to control the CEO frequency. This second functionality is implemented by pumping the SESAM with a continuous-wave 980-nm laser diode in order to slightly modify its nonlinear reflectivity. We use the standard ƒ-to-2ƒ method for detection of the CEO frequency, which is stabilized by applying a feedback signal to the current of the SESAM pump diode. We compare the SESAM-OOM stabilization with the traditional method of gain modulation via control of the pump power of the Yb:CALGO gain crystal. While the bandwidth for gain modulation is intrinsically limited to ∼250 kHz by the laser cavity dynamics, we show that the OOM provides a feedback bandwidth above 500 kHz. Hence, we were able to obtain a residual integrated phase noise of 430 mrad for the stabilized CEO beat, which represents an improvement of more than 30% compared to gain modulation stabilization. - PublicationMétadonnées seulementHigh-power integrated ultrafast semiconductor disk laser: multi-Watt 10 GHz pulse generation(2012)
;Wittwer, Valentin J ;Mangold, Mario; ;Sieber, Oliver D ;Golling, Matthias; Keller, Ursula - PublicationAccès libreCarrier-Envelope Offset Frequency Stabilization of a Thin-Disk Laser Oscillator via Depletion Modulation
;Andrade, José R. C; ;Tajalli, Ayhan ;Dietrich, Christian M ;Kleinert, Sven ;Placzek, Fabian ;Kreipe, Bernhard; ;Wittwer, Valentin J; Morgner, UweWe present a novel concept for the stabilization of the carrier-envelope offset (CEO) frequency of femtosecond pulse trains from thin-disk laser oscillators by exploiting gain depletion modulation in the active gain region. We shine a small fraction of the laser output power back onto the thin disk allowing the population inversion in the gain medium to be controlled. We employ this technique in our home-built Kerr-lens mode-locked Yb:YAG thin-disk laser and benchmark the performance against the proven technique of pump current modulation for CEO stabilization, showing that the two techniques have equivalent performance. The new method which only requires an additional AOM demonstrates a scalable and cost-effective method for CEO stabilization of high-power laser oscillators. - PublicationMétadonnées seulementHigh-power MIXSEL: an integrated ultrafast semiconductor laser with 6.4 W average power(2010)
;Rudin, Benjamin ;Wittwer, Valentin J ;Maas, Deran J. H. C.; ;Sieber, Oliver D ;Barbarin, Yohan ;Golling, Matthias; Keller, Ursula - PublicationAccès libreExperimentally verified pulse formation model for high-power femtosecond VECSELs
;Sieber, Oliver D; ;Wittwer, Valentin J ;Mangold, Mario ;Golling, Matthias ;Tilma, Bauke W; Keller, UrsulaOptically pumped vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (OP-VECSELs), passively modelocked with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM), have generated the highest average output power from any sub-picosecond semiconductor laser. Many applications, including frequency comb synthesis and coherent supercontinuum generation, require pulses in the sub-300-fs regime. A quantitative understanding of the pulse formation mechanism is required in order to reach this regime while maintaining stable, high-average-power performance. We present a numerical model with which we have obtained excellent quantitative agreement with two recent experiments in the femtosecond regime, and we have been able to correctly predict both the observed pulse duration and the output power for the first time. Our numerical model not only confirms the soliton-like pulse formation in the femtosecond regime, but also allows us to develop several clear guidelines to scale the performance toward shorter pulses and higher average output power. In particular, we show that a key VECSEL design parameter is a high gain saturation fluence. By optimizing this parameter, 200-fs pulses with an average output power of more than 1 W should be possible. - PublicationMétadonnées seulementFemtosecond VECSEL with tunable multi-gigahertz repetition rate(2011)
;Sieber, Oliver D ;Wittwer, Valentin J ;Mangold, Mario; ;Golling, Matthias; Keller, Ursula - PublicationAccès libreFrequency comb metrology with an optical parametric oscillator
;Balskus, K; ;Wittwer, Valentin J; ;Ploetzing, T; ;McCracken, R. A ;Zhang, Z ;Bartels, A ;Reid, D. TWe report on the first demonstration of absolute frequency comb metrology with an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) frequency comb. The synchronously-pumped OPO operated in the 1.5-μm spectral region and was referenced to an H-maser atomic clock. Using different techniques, we thoroughly characterized the frequency noise power spectral density (PSD) of the repetition rate frep, of the carrier-envelope offset frequency fCEO, and of an optical comb line νN. The comb mode optical linewidth at 1557 nm was determined to be ~70 kHz for an observation time of 1 s from the measured frequency noise PSD, and was limited by the stability of the microwave frequency standard available for the stabilization of the comb repetition rate. We achieved a tight lock of the carrier envelope offset frequency with only ~300 mrad residual integrated phase noise, which makes its contribution to the optical linewidth negligible. The OPO comb was used to measure the absolute optical frequency of a near-infrared laser whose second-harmonic component was locked to the F = 2→3 transition of the 87Rb D2 line at 780 nm, leading to a measured transition frequency of νRb = 384,228,115,346 ± 16 kHz. We performed the same measurement with a commercial fiber-laser comb operating in the 1.5-μm region. Both the OPO comb and the commercial fiber comb achieved similar performance. The measurement accuracy was limited by interferometric noise in the fibered setup of the Rb-stabilized laser. - PublicationAccès libreVECSEL gain characterization
;Mangold, Mario ;Wittwer, Valentin J ;Sieber, Oliver D; ;Krestnikov, Igor L ;Livshits, Daniil A ;Golling, Matthias; Keller, UrsulaWe present the first full gain characterization of two vertical external cavity surface emitting laser (VECSEL) gain chips with similar designs operating in the 960-nm wavelength regime. We optically pump the structures with continuous-wave (cw) 808-nm radiation and measure the nonlinear reflectivity for 130-fs and 1.4-ps probe pulses as function of probe pulse fluence, pump power, and heat sink temperature. With this technique we are able to measure the saturation behavior for VECSEL gain chips for the first time. The characterization with 1.4-ps pulses resulted in saturation fluences of 40-80 µJ/cm2, while probing with 130-fs pulses yields reduced saturation fluences of 30-50 µJ/cm2 for both structures. For both pulse durations this is lower than previously assumed. A small-signal gain of up to 5% is obtained with this technique. Furthermore, in a second measurement setup, we characterize the spectral dependence of the gain using a tunable cw probe beam. We measure a gain bandwidth of over 26 nm for both structures, full width at half maximum.