Femtosecond semiconductor laser system with resonator-internal dispersion adaptation.

We present a femtosecond laser diode system that is capable of autonomously adjusting itself to compensate for the external dispersion in an arbitrary application. The laser system contains a spatial light modulator inside the cavity which is controlled by an evolutionary algorithm in order to allow for phase and amplitude shaping of the laser emission. The cavity-internal dispersion control is shown to be much more efficient than an external control with a pulse shaper.

[1]  X. Zhang,et al.  Free‐space electro‐optic sampling of terahertz beams , 1995 .

[2]  A. Weiner.  Femtosecond pulse shaping using spatial light modulators , 2000 .

[3]  Martin R. Hofmann,et al.  Passively Mode-Locked Diode Laser With Optimized Dispersion Management , 2015, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[4]  Rick Trebino,et al.  Single-diffraction-grating and grism pulse compressors , 2010 .

[5]  Hidemi Shigekawa,et al.  Optical pulse compression to 5.0 fs by use of only a spatial light modulator for phase compensation , 2001 .

[6]  Boris N. Chichkov,et al.  Ablation of metals by ultrashort laser pulses , 1997 .

[7]  Andreas Klehr,et al.  Self-optimizing femtosecond semiconductor laser. , 2015, Optics express.

[8]  Noriyuki Fuutagawa,et al.  140-fs duration and 60-W peak power blue-violet optical pulses generated by a dispersion-compensated GaInN mode-locked semiconductor laser diode using a nonlinear pulse compressor. , 2015, Optics express.

[9]  Joshua Vaughan,et al.  Analysis of replica pulses in femtosecond pulse shaping with pixelated devices. , 2006, Optics express.

[10]  E. L. Portnoi,et al.  Monolithic and multi-gigahertz mode-locked semiconductor lasers: constructions, experiments, models and applications , 2000 .

[11]  I. J. Schoenberg,et al.  Cardinal interpolation and spline functions. III. Cardinal Hermite interpolation , 1973 .

[12]  John E. Bowers,et al.  Short pulse generation using multisegment mode-locked semiconductor lasers , 1992 .

[13]  Martin R. Hofmann,et al.  Phase and amplitude calibration of dual-mask spatial light modulator for high-resolution femtosecond pulse shaping , 2015 .

[14]  K. Nelson,et al.  Generation of high-fidelity programmable ultrafast optical waveforms. , 1995, Optics letters.

[15]  W. Denk,et al.  Two-photon laser scanning fluorescence microscopy. , 1990, Science.

[16]  S. Fourmaux,et al.  Non-thermal melting in semiconductors measured at femtosecond resolution , 2001, Nature.

[17]  Andrew M. Weiner,et al.  Programmable shaping of femtosecond optical pulses by use of 128-element liquid crystal phase modulator , 1992 .

[18]  Rick Trebino,et al.  Extremely simple single-prism ultrashort- pulse compressor. , 2006, Optics express.

[19]  S. Silvestri,et al.  Compression of high-energy laser pulses below 5 fs. , 1997, Optics letters.

[20]  Jingzhou Xu,et al.  Comparison between pulsed terahertz time-domain imaging and continuous wave terahertz imaging , 2005 .

[21]  R. van Roijen,et al.  Theory for passive mode-locking in semiconductor laser structures including the effects of self-phase modulation, dispersion, and pulse collisions , 1996 .

[22]  Martin R. Hofmann,et al.  High peak power pulses from dispersion optimised modelocked semiconductor laser , 2013 .

[23]  Andreas Klehr,et al.  Mode-locked semiconductor laser system with intracavity spatial light modulator for linear and nonlinear dispersion management. , 2014, Optics express.

[24]  J. Siqueira,et al.  Effect of SLM pixelation on two-photon fluorescence by applying an off-centered quadratic spectral phase mask , 2016 .

[25]  S. Gee,et al.  Ultrashort pulse generation by intracavity spectral shaping and phase compensation of external-cavity modelocked semiconductor lasers , 2000, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics.

[26]  John Carroll,et al.  Dynamics of monolithic passively mode-locked semiconductor lasers , 1995 .

[27]  Daomu Zhao,et al.  Optical vortices generated by multi-level achromatic spiral phase plates for broadband beams , 2008 .

[28]  Kevin A. Williams,et al.  Integrated Extended-Cavity 1.5-μm Semiconductor Laser Switchable Between Self- and Anti-Colliding Pulse Passive Mode-Locking Configuration , 2015, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[29]  P. Delfyett,et al.  FROG measured high-power 185-fs pulses generated by down-chirping of the dispersion-managed breathing-mode semiconductor mode-locked laser , 2005, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[30]  Keith A. Nelson,et al.  Impulsive stimulated scattering: General importance in femtosecond laser pulse interactions with matter, and spectroscopic applications , 1985 .

[31]  M. Koch,et al.  Fourier-transform external cavity lasers , 2002 .