B. Braun et al., CONTINUOUS-WAVE MODE-LOCKED SOLID-STATE LASERS WITH ENHANCED SPATIAL HOLE-BURNING .1. EXPERIMENTS, Applied physics. B, Lasers and optics, 61(5), 1995, pp. 429-437
We systematically investigate the difference between both actively and
passively mode-locked lasers with Gain-at-the-End (GE) and Gain-in-th
e-Middle (GM) at the example of Nd:YLF lasers. The GE laser generates
pulse widths approximately three times shorter than a comparable GM ca
vity. This is due to enhanced Spatial Hole Burning (SHE) which effecti
vely flattens the saturated gain and allows for a larger lasing bandwi
dth compared to a GM cavity. We first investigate enhanced SHE by meas
uring the cw mode spectrum, where we have observed that the mode spaci
ng in GE cavities depends primarily on the crystal length. This was al
so confirmed for a Nd:LSB crystal, where the pump absorption length wa
s significantly shorter than the crystal length. In mode-locked operat
ion, pulse widths of 4 ps for passive mode locking and 5 ps for active
mode locking are demonstrated with GE cavities, compared to lips for
passive and 17 ps for active mode locking with GM cavities. Additional
ly, the time-bandwidth product for the GE cavity is approximately twic
e the ideal product for a sech(2) pulse shape and cannot be improved b
y dispersion compensation alone, while the GM cavity has nearly ideal
time-bandwidth-limited performance. The results for the GM cavity comp
are well to existing theories taking into account the added effect of
pump-power-dependent gain bandwidth which increases the bandwidth of N
d:YLF from 360 to > 500 GHz. In a following paper [1] (called Part II)
a rigorous theoretical treatment of the effects due to SHE will be pr
esented.