Megawatt peak power, octave-spanning Ti:sapphire oscillators

Abstract

We demonstrate a high-power, octave-spanning, Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser using double-chirped mirrors to precisely compensate for intracavity dispersion. The ultra-broadband spectrum spans from 550 nm to 1100 nm and the few-cycle pulse is as short as 6.6 fs with an average power up to 880 mW corresponding to the peak power of 1.6 MW. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest average output power directly achieved from an octave-spanning Ti:sapphire laser oscillator at the repetition rate of 80 MHz. In addition, the third-order harmonically mode-locked phenomenon was observed in our experiments.