Thermal effects in laser pumped Kerr-lens modelocked Ti:sapphire lasers

Abstract Numerical beam propagation simulations are used to demonstrate that the distributed thermal lensing, produced by the absorption of the pump laser in the gain medium, profoundly affects the operation of hard-apertured, Kerr-lens modelocked Ti:sapphire lasers. The pump-induced thermal lensing is shown to shift and distort the resonator stability regions (even allowing the regions to overlap) and severely perturb the modelocking mechanism in one of the stability regions.

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