High precision optical characterization of semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors

Semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs) have become a key element of many ultrafast laser sources, enabling passively modelocked lasers with >100 GHz repetition rate or with >10 microJ pulse energy. Precise knowledge of the nonlinear optical reflectivity is required to optimize the S...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Optics express Vol. 16; no. 10; p. 7571
Main Authors:	Maas, D. J., Rudin, B., Bellancourt, A.-R., Iwaniuk, D., Marchese, S. V., Südmeyer, T., Keller, U.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States 12.05.2008
ISSN:	1094-4087, 1094-4087
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs) have become a key element of many ultrafast laser sources, enabling passively modelocked lasers with >100 GHz repetition rate or with >10 microJ pulse energy. Precise knowledge of the nonlinear optical reflectivity is required to optimize the SESAMs for self-starting passive modelocking at record high repetition rates or pulse energies. In this article, we discuss a new method for wide dynamic range nonlinear reflectivity measurements. We achieve a higher accuracy (<0.05%) with a simpler and more cost-efficient measurement scheme compared with previous measurement systems. The method can easily be implemented for arbitrary wavelength regions and fluence ranges.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	1094-4087 1094-4087
DOI:	10.1364/OE.16.007571