Glossary of Symbols ............................................. x
Introduction to Optical Pulses .................................. 1
Optical Pulses in the Time Domain ............................ 2
Optical Pulses in the Frequency Domain ....................... 4
Bandwidth-Limited Pulses ..................................... 5
Pulse Trains and Frequency Combs ............................. 6
Carrier-Envelope Offset ...................................... 7
Overview of Laser Sources for Optical Pulses ................. 9
Q Switching .................................................... 10
Active and Passive Q Switching .............................. 11
Essentials of Laser Dynamics ................................ 12
Pumping the Gain Medium ..................................... 13
Dynamics of Active Q Switching .............................. 14
Achievable Pulse Energy ..................................... 15
Pulse Duration and Buildup Time ............................. 16
Influence of Pulse Repetition Rate .......................... 17
Dynamics of Passive Q Switching ............................. 18
Pulse Duration and Pulse Energy ............................. 20
Saturable Absorbers for Q Switching ......................... 21
Influence of Pump Fluctuations .............................. 22
Mode Beating in Multimode Lasers ............................ 23
Q-Switched Solid-State Bulk Lasers .......................... 24
Q-Switched Microchip Lasers ................................. 26
Q-Switched Fiber Lasers ..................................... 27
Multiple Pulsing and Instabilities .......................... 28
Cavity Dumping .............................................. 29
Gain Switching ................................................. 30
Comparison with Other Techniques ............................ 32
Mode Locking ................................................... 33
Active Mode Locking ......................................... 34
Passive Mode Locking ........................................ 36
Mode Locking with Fast Saturable Absorbers .................. 37
Mode Locking with Slow Saturable Absorbers .................. 38
Mode Locking (cont.)
Chromatic Dispersion ........................................ 39
Dispersive Pulse Broadening ................................. 40
Effect of Dispersion in Mode-Locked Lasers .................. 41
Dispersion Compensation ..................................... 42
The Kerr Nonlinearity ....................................... 44
Self-Phase Modulation ....................................... 45
Self-Phase Modulation and Chromatic Dispersion .............. 46
Optical Solitons ............................................ 47
Quasi-Soliton Pulses in Laser Resonators .................... 48
Semiconductor Saturable Absorbers ........................... 50
Other Saturable Absorbers for Mode Locking .................. 54
Initiation of Mode Locking .................................. 55
Q-Switching Instabilities ................................... 56
Actively Mode-Locked Solid-State Bulk Lasers ................ 58
Harmonic Mode Locking ....................................... 59
Passively Mode-Locked Solid-State Bulk Lasers ............... 60
Performance Figures of Mode-Locked Bulk Lasers .............. 61
Choice of Solid-State Gain Media ............................ 62
Additive-Pulse Mode Locking ................................. 63
Kerr Lens Mode Locking ...................................... 64
Generation of Few-Cycle Pulses .............................. 65
Mode-Locked High-Power Thin-Disk Lasers ..................... 67
Miniature Lasers with High Repetition Rates ................. 69
Mode-Locked Fiber Lasers .................................... 70
Soliton Fiber Lasers ........................................ 71
Limitations of Soliton Fiber Lasers ......................... 73
Stretched-Pulse Fiber Lasers ................................ 74
Similariton Fiber Lasers .................................... 75
Mode-Locked Diode Lasers .................................... 77
Mode-Locked VECSELs ......................................... 79
Mode-Locked Dye Lasers ...................................... 80
Instabilities of Mode-Locked Lasers ......................... 81
Cavity Dumping .............................................. 83
Amplification of Ultrashort Pulses ............................. 84
Multipass Solid-State Bulk Amplifiers ....................... 86
Regenerative Amplifiers ..................................... 87
Fiber Amplifiers ............................................ 88
Amplification of Ultrashort Pulses (cont.)
Chirped-Pulse Amplification ................................. 89
Optical Parametric Amplifiers ............................... 91
Pulse Characterization ......................................... 92
Measurement of Pulse Energy and Peak Power .................. 93
Autocorrelators ............................................. 94
Pulse Characterization with FROG ............................ 97
Pulse Characterization with SPIDER .......................... 98
Measurement of Carrier-Envelope Offset ...................... 99
Timing Jitter of Mode-Locked Lasers ........................ 100
Measurement of Timing Jitter ............................... 101
Equation Summary .............................................. 102
Bibliography .................................................. 105
Index ......................................................... 117
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