SOLITON MODE-LOCKED ND-YALO3 LASER AT 930 NM

We report on a soliton mode-locked Nd:YAlO3 laser at 930 nm. We used a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror and a Gires-Tournois Interfer ometer for dispersion compensation to achieve soliton made locking. Th e generated pulses were as short as Delta tau(FWHM) = 1.9 Ps With a sp ectral bandwidth of Delta lambda = 0.5 nm. The pulses were almost tran sform limited assuming a sech(2) pulse shape. The averaged output powe r was 410 mW at an absorbed pump power level of 1.76 W. An investigati on of the effect of the third-order dispersion of the Gires-Tournois i nterferometer on the spectra of the mode-locked laser is presented. (C ) 1998 Optical Society of America.