Ti:sapphire oscillator produces high-quality 8-femtosecond pulses

A self-modelocked, titanium-doped sapphire (Ti:sapphire) laser developed by researchers in Vienna uses chirped dielectric mirrors to produce nearly bandwidth-limited, 8-fs pulses near 0.8 µm, with an energy of approximately 1 nJ at an 80-MH¥repetition rate. The system is pumped by an argon-ion laser emitting 3 W of all-lines output. Pulses with durations below 10 fs have been previously produced from conventional prism-controlled Ti:sapphire systems, but prisms reduce pulse quality for durations much below 15 fs. Dielectric mirrors introduce a constant negative group-delay dispersion over a bandwidth of approximately 80 THz, avoiding higher-order dispersion limitations imposed by prism pairs.

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