100-kHz 22-fs Ti:sapphire regenerative amplification laser with programmable spectral control

Abstract

An ultrashort, high-power Ti:sapphire laser operating at 100kHz was developed. A regenerative amplifier with a cryogenically cooled Ti:sapphire crystal and a grism compressor were incorporated in the laser. For achieving a wide bandwidth of 78nm, a programmable spectral control filter was applied to the regenerative amplifier to compensate for the gain narrowing effect. An output power of 1.4 GW with near Fourier-transform-limited pulse duration of 22fs was achieved after minimizing a spectral phase error with the grism compressor, and the measured beam quality factor (M2) was less than 1.2. This high-quality laser will facilitate applications requiring high-repetition rate, ultrashort, high-power laser pulses. © 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.