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Series in Quantum Electronics
edited by
Henry Baltes, Peter Günter, Ursula Keller,
Fritz K. Kneubühl = , Walter Lukosz,
Hans Melchior, Markus W. Sigrist

Vol. 32

Thomas Südmeyer

Novel Ultrafast Nonlinear Devices
Pumped With High Power
Passivlely Mode-Locked Lasers
1st edition / 1. Auflage 2003, XVI, 94 pages / Seiten, € 64,00. ISBN 3-89649-862-2

Laser sources generating femtosecond or picosecond pulses at high average output powers are essential for numerous industrial and scientific applications. A major advancement was the recent demonstration of ultrafast diode-pumped solid-state laser systems operating at tens of watts average power with MHz repetition rates. However, the available laser gain materials strongly limit the obtainable wavelengths as well as the minimum pulse durations. These limitations can be overcome by exploiting nonlinear optical processes. In this thesis, novel ultrafast nonlinear devices that allow a substantial reduction in the pulse duration, and the generation of pulses at new and tunable wavelengths, are described and analyzed. One device is a pulse compression system based on a microstructured large mode area fiber that delivers record high average powers in sub-hundred femtosecond pulses at MHz repetition rates. In other devices, parametric frequency conversion was employed to access new wavelengths. The first bulk optical parametric generator directly pumped by a mode-locked laser at the full laser repetition rate is described and analyzed. Also a new type of synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (OPO), the fiber-feedback OPO, is presented and discussed. Apart from compactness, a fiber-feedback OPO has important advantages such as an exceptional insensitivity to intracavity losses and to cavity length mismatch. Despite its simplicity, a recently demonstrated version generates record high average powers in sub-picosecond pulses in the 1.5-µm wavelength region.

Thomas Südmeyer studied Physics at the University of Hanover, Germany, and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. During research visits at Thomson-CSF, Orsay, and Strathclyde University, Glasgow, he worked on nonlinear optics and high power solid-state lasers. In 1999, he joined the Institute of Quantum Electronics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland. His research focused on the development of high-power passively mode-locked lasers and novel ultrafast nonlinear devices. He has written and co-authored more than thirty scientific journal articles and conference contributions.

Series in Quantum Electronics

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