589 nm yellow laser pumped Kerr-lens mode-locked Alexandrite laser producing sub-50 fs pulses.

Abstract

We report a femtosecond Kerr-lens mode-locked (KLM) Alexandrite laser resonantly pumped by a 589 nm yellow laser. The 4 nJ pulses as short as 42 fs were obtained corresponding to a peak power of 100 kW. With the repetition rate of 104 MHz, the average power of 420 mW was attained. The time-bandwidth product of generated laser pulse was measured to be 0.324 with a beam quality factor of M2 ≤ 1.13. The exceptional performance of visible femtosecond laser may find potential applications in various fields.