100-fs-level diode-pumped Yb-doped laser amplifiers

Ultrashort pulse lasers with pulse duration on the level of 100 fs can be used for a variety of interesting applications that rely on multiphoton processes or ultrafast dynamics. Up to now, this field was reserved to Ti:sapphire-based laser systems that exhibit a quite complex laser architecture and relatively low laser efficiency. This may be an important reason why such applications could not yet penetrate into large scale industrial applications. We have realized an Yb-doped tungstate-based regenerative amplifier in innovative amplifier architecture. We succeeded to produce 106-fs-pulses at 70 mu J and 140 fs at 40 mu J pulse energy, respectively. The average power is on the level of several Watts. The optimized management and exploitation of dispersive and nonlinear effects during the amplification process inside the regenerative amplifier cavity enabled the generation of such short pulses with excellent temporal quality and in an extremely simple and robust laser architecture that is well suited for industrial environments. Applying the same amplifier architecture to an Yb:YAG thin disk regenerative amplifier enabled the generation of pulses as short as 360-fs at high pulse energies exceeding 200 mu J and high average powers of more than 30 W.