390 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 16, No.

6 / March 15,1991

Coupled-cavity resonant passive mode-locked

Nd:yttrium lithium fluoride laser

U. Keller and T. K.Woodward

AT&T Bell Laboratories,Holmdel, New Jersey 07733

D. L. Sivco and A. Y. Cho

AT&T Bell Laboratories,Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974

Received September 24, 1990; accepted January 7, 1991

We report coupled-cavity resonant passive mode locking of a Nd:YLF laser. This technique has produced 4-ps
pulses at a wavelength of 1.047 jm with 390-mW average power at a 250-MHz repetition rate, corresponding to a 1.6-
nJ pulse energy. The Nd:YLF rod was pumped with 1.5 W of power at 798 nm from a Ti:sapphire laser. The
nonlinear reflector used in the coupled cavity was an InGaAs/GaAs strained layer multiple-quantum-well sample.

We introduce a new technique for passive mode lock- gies ranging from 1 pJ to 1 nJ, for potential communi-
ing for a cw pumped Nd:YLF laser, using an InGaAs/ cation and computing applications. At present, high-
GaAs quantum-well reflector as a nonlinearity in an speed photonic switching elements require switching
external coupled cavity. This mode-locking tech- energies of the order of 1 pJ. 9" 0 Diode-pumped
nique is called resonant passive mode locking (RPM) mode-locked solid-state lasers offer a practical alter-
because of the resonant nonlinearity in the coupled native to mode-locked semiconductor lasers for high-
cavity. The first demonstration of this novel method power short-pulse laser sources with clean spatial and
was with a Ti:sapphire laser and an AlGaAs/GaAs spectral mode properties. The output power of active
multiple-quantum-well (MQW) reflector.", 2 RPM is or passive mode-locked semiconductor lasers is typi-
markedly different from coupled-cavity mode-locking cally low, in the maximum range of a few milliwatts,
techniques with a nonresonant nonlinearity (i.e., Kerr because the laser must be operated near threshold to
type) in the extended cavity and does not need any generate short pulses. Therefore, picojoule-pulse en-
active cavity-length control for stable pulse trains.2 It ergies are achieved only for repetition rates that are
promises to become a simple and effective way for •1 GHz. Amplifier stages are required for picojoule
passive mode locking of laser materials with a high energies at higher repetition rates. For example, with
saturation fluence such as Ti:sapphire and Nd3+_ one semiconductor amplifier stage following a mode-
doped crystals (YAG, YLF, BEL) and glasses. locked semiconductor laser having a 960-MHz repeti-
An early example of coupled-cavity passive mode tion rate and 1.2-mW average output power, 1.3-pJ
locking was the soliton laser, 3 for which the nonlinear pulses were amplified to 45 pJ.ll In contrast, with
external cavity medium, an optical fiber, supports soli- high-power diode-laser pump arrays, solid-state lasers
ton pulse formation in a net negative group-velocity can easily supply high power levels, and most difficul-
dispersion regime. This technique has been extended ties center around mode-locking technqiues. Both
to an external nonlinear coupled cavity with positive active and passive methods have been used. Active
group-velocity dispersion, now referred to as additive- mode locking of a diode-pumped Nd:YLF laser at a 2-
pulse mode locking4' 5 (APM) or coupled-cavity mode GHz repetition rate with 7-ps pulses and -70-pJ pulse
locking.6 The pulse formation is based on the coher- energy 12 and of a diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser at a 1-
ent superposition of a pulse in the main cavity and a GHz repetition rate with 60-pJ pulse energy'3 has
pulse from the coupled cavity that have experienced a been demonstrated. Passive mode locking is general-
nonlinear phase shift (i.e., self-phase modulation in an ly preferable, as it offers potential for increased repeti-
optical fiber) leading to constructive interference at tion rate, greater ease of use, and economy. The pas-
the peak of the pulse and destructive interference in sive APM technique applied to a Nd:YAG laser pro-
the wings. In case of RPM, the coupled cavity has duced 1.7-ps pulses with 25-mW average power when
negligible dispersion and the nonlinear quantum-well diode pumping was used,' 4" 5 and 9 ps with 1.3-W
reflector generates a rapid amplitude modulation that average output power when flash-lamp pumping was
strongly induces mode locking. This fast amplitude used.' 6 An APM Nd:YLF laser produced 2-ps pulses
nonlinearity has been observed in pump-probe mea- with 10-mW average power with diode pumping' 4 and
surements.7 A recently developed theory on coupled- 3.7-ps pulses with 7-W average output power with
cavity mode locking with a resonant nonlinearity 8
sug- flash-lamp pumping.'7 A krypton-laser-pumped
gests that this fast amplitude modulation is enough to APM Nd:glass laser produced 380-fs pulses.' 8 The
mode lock the laser. fiber length (a critical parameter in an APM laser)
This study of the RPM Nd:YLF laser is motivated used in these APM's was -90 cm, limiting the com-
primarily by the need for practical high-power, high- pactness of this mode-locking scheme. In the case of
repetition-rate pulsed laser sources with pulse ener- the RPM Nd:YLF both the crystal and the quantum-

0146-9592/91/060390-03$5.00/0 © 1991 Optical Society of America

 March 15,1991 / Vol. 16, No. 6 / OPTICS LETTERS 391

Out 4x Lens at an -250-MHz repetition rate, corresponding to 1.6-

.R 200 mm C1 c2 nJ pulse energy with an -48% overall output coupler
C2. The pulses are simultaneously monitored with a
170
noncollinear autocorrelator, a sampling scope, a rf
* 5 mm\
r InGaAs/GaAs Reflector spectrum analyzer, and an optical spectrum analzyer.
|Nd:YLF Crystal j on Thermoelectric Cooler: The pulse on the sampling scope is well defined, and
its width is limited by the overall time resolution of
Main Cavity Coupled Cavity photodiode and sampling head to -50-ps pulse dura-
tion. The stability of the mode-locked pulses is not so
Fig. 1. Cavity design. good as for the RPM Ti:sapphire laser. 2 We observe
as much as 30%amplitude fluctuations on the autocor-
relation trace. The pulse width remains constant.
well saturable absorber are small, so the laser should The average power reflected from the quantum-well
be scalable to high repetition rates. absorber and injected back into the main cavity is only
The RPM Nd:YLF laser (Fig. 1) consists of a linear 3% because of significant diffraction from surface stri-
folded cwNd:YLF cavity with a 3%output coupler, C1, ations on the quantum-well reflector.'9 This diffrac-
which is coupled to an external low-Q cavity with a tion also contributes to the poor mode quality of the
nonlinear InGaAs/GaAs quantum-well end reflector reflected beam. The poor reflection from the quan-
with a band gap near the lasing wavelength of 1.047 tum-well sample may also be the reason for the excess
,um.19 A tunable output coupler consisting of a half- wings in the autocorrelation trace (Fig. 2).
wave plate and a polarizing beam splitter inside the The 4-ps pulses are achieved at a slightly detuned
external cavity is used as the overall output coupler, cavity length of -0.22 mm. When the two cavities are
C2. The Nd:YLF cavity is end pumped with a Ti:sap- exactly matched, the laser is extremely unstable, with
phire laser at 798 nm. This 5-mm Nd:YLF rod has its no defined pulses on the sampling scope, which is
flat end high-reflection coated for the laser wave- consistent with the theoretical model.8 Mode locking
length at 1.047 Am and antireflection coated for the in this regime would require active cavity-length con-
laser pump at 798 nm, while the other end is cut at trol. Increasing the cavity-length detuning increases
Brewster's angle. The linear folded cavity design with the pulse width, and at more than #0.9-mm detuning
an angle of 17° corrects for the astigmatism arising the autocorrelation traces begin to break up into mul-
from the 200-mm radius of curvature of the turning tiple -4-ps pulses superimposed upon a longer pulse.
mirror.2 0 Output coupler Cl is slightly wedged to These pulses are separated by the cavity-length de-
minimize unwanted 6talon effects in the cavity. The tuning time. At even larger detunings these short
nominal Nd3 + concentration is 1.5%. The calculated pulses do not overlap anymore, and they show a 2:1
cavity beam waist in the Nd:YLF rod is elliptical, with intensity ratio of peak to background, which implies
a beam radius of 66 Am in the saggital plane and 93 am that they are coherence spikes. Therefore at larger
in the tangential plane. To produce a TEMoo mode, cavity detunings the laser is not properly mode locked.
the Ti:sapphire pump laser beam is focused to a small- We believe that the detuning range over which mode
er spot size of -46-Atm radius by an 88-mm focusing locking is observed can be improved with better reflec-
lens. The Nd:YLF laser cavity with its 3% output tor quality, as discussed above.
coupler forms a stable cw laser with a slope efficiency When we vary the output coupler C, of the cw

1.0 .
of 57%and a pump threshold of -48 mW. This high Nd:YLF laser, the mode-locking performance is im-
slope efficiency and low threshold are possible because proved as the output coupler Cl is changed from 10%
of the small pump laser area. The mode-beating fre- to 5% and then to 3%. For an output coupler of 10%
quency (i.e., the cavity repetition rate) of the cw the nonlinear coupled cavity produces strong noise
Nd:YLF laser is -250 MHz. We used a microscope sidebands up to -10 dB below the first laser harmonic
lens with a focusing length of 30.6 mm to focus the
beam to an estimated -30-Am diameter spot onto the . .. . .. . .. . . I . . .

nonlinear MQW reflector that forms the end mirror of RPM Nd:YLF
the coupled cavity. The nonlinear quantum-well re- . measured
flector is an In.,Ga1.,As/GaAs MQW optical modulator 0.8
0.8
_
| Z|
autocorrelation2
Ideal4pssech 2

with a band gap near 1.047 Am, described in more autocorrelation

detail in Ref. 19 as sample D. Because there is no 0.6
dielectric mirror grown underneath the MWQ struc- .2

ture and the GaAs substrate is transmissive at 1.047 0

,um, we evaporated a gold mirror onto a MQW layer 0.4

consisting of -5 nm of chrome as the sticking layer and
r250 nm of gold. The reflector is indium bonded onto 0.2
a copper substrate, which is mounted onto a thermo-
electric cooler.
The pulse width is measured with a noncollinear 0.0
-30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30
autocorrelator (Fig. 2, solid curve) and compared with Delay Time, ps
an ideal 4.0-ps FWHM sech2 pulse (Fig. 2, dashed
curve). The Nd:YLF rod is cw pumped with 1.5 W of Fig. 2. 4-ps autocorrelation trace assuming a sech2 pulse
power, generating 390 mW of average output power Pi shape.
392 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 16, No. 6 / March 15,1991

and spectral mode properties of high-power diode ar-

rays, the diode pump power cannot be focused so
tightly as the Ti:sapphire pump power. Therefore the
mode volume in the Nd:YLF crsytal has to be enlarged
to guarantee TEMoo mode operation, which will in-
crease the pump threshold. Diode pumping may pro-
duce a practical high-power laser source with hun-
1.047 gm 1.047 gim
dreds of picojoules of pulse energy at repetition rates
well above 1 GHz for applications requiring high-ener-
Fig. 3. Time-averaged optical spectrum under (a) cw oper- gy, high-repetition-rate laser sources such as photonic
ation and (b) mode-locked operation. switching for optical communication and computing.
The authors thank Wayne H. Knox, who inspired
the original RPM work on the Ti:sapphire laser on
owing to enhanced relaxation oscillations of the which this work is based, Kurt J. Weingarten of
Nd:YLF cavity. Decreasing the output coupler de- Lightwave Electronics Corporation for the Nd:YLF
creases these noise sidebands, which are greatly miti- laser crystal and helpful discussions, and Greg Raybon
gated with the 3% output coupler. We observe opti- for the antireflection coating of the quantum-well re-
mized performance with an overall output coupler C2
(Fig. 1) in the range of 50% to 60% at the above- flectors.
mentioned power levels.
Monitoring the output of the laser with the rf spec- References
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harmonic near 250 MHz that is -60 dB above the Phenomena VII, C. B. Harris, E. P. Ippen, G. A.
mode beating signal from the cw Nd:YLF laser with Mourou, and A. H. Zewail,eds. (Springer-Verlag, Berlin,
the external cavity blocked. By shortening the exter- 1990), p. 69.
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