Colquiriite fs-sources for commercial applications

Future commercial applications of fs-lasers require compact, reliable beam sources with low effort of operating expense. We report for the first time to our knowledge on a real all solid state master oscillator power amplifier system delivering pulse energies in the range of regenerative Ti:Sapphire amplifier systems (> 100 μJ) with sub 100 fs pulselength. The use of colquiriite crystals requires a pump source of high luminosity in the red spectral range. We realized such a pump source with red diode laser bars. Direct diode pumping and actively controlled thermoelectric cooling of diode bars and laser crystals ensure stable operation of oscillator and regenerative amplifier. For simplicity of the system we investigate stretcher-free CPA exploiting intracavity dispersion of the amplifier resonator. Due to low amplification of colquiriite crystals many roundtrips are required resulting in a stretched seed pulse. For pulse-compression a 6-prism-compressor was designed minimizing third order dispersion. Remaining dispersion is pre-compensated with chirped resonator mirrors. The presented laser system has been used for ablation of ear bones.