LASER mode locked

In 1991 a remarkable discovery was made, accidentally, with a Tp -sapphire laser pumped with an Ar+ laser. Whereas we would expect this to result in CW laser action, when a sharp jolt was given to the table supporting the laser, mode locking (Section 9.1.5) occurred. This is known as self-locking of modes, and we shall not discuss further the reasons for this and how it can be controlled. One very important property of the resulting pulses is that they are very short. Pulse widths of a few tens of femtoseconds can be produced routinely and with high pulse-to-pulse stability. Further modification to the laser can... 

Dye-Sensitized Photoisomerization. One technological appHcation of photoisomerization is in the synthesis of vitamin A. In a mixture of vitamin A acetate (all-trans stmcture) and the 11-cis isomer (23), sensitized photoisomerization of the 11-cis to the all-trans molecule occurs using zinc tetraphenylporphyrin, chlorophyU, hematoporphyrin, rose bengal, or erythrosin as sensitizers (73). Another photoisomerization is reported to be responsible for dye laser mode-locking (74). In this example, one metastable isomer of an oxadicarbocyanine dye was formed during flashlamp excitation, and it was the isomer that exhibited mode-locking characteristics. 

Argon ion lasers, mode-locked to produce pulses in the picosecond domain, are in widespread use, producing power levels generally higher than diode lasers up to ca. 

Time-correlated single photon counting A technique for the measurement of the time histogram of a sequence of photons with respect to a periodic event, e.g. a flash from a repetitive nanosecond lamp or a CW operated laser mode-locked laser). The essential part is a time-to-amplitude-converter (TAG) which transforms the arrival time between a start and a stop pulse into a voltage. Sometimes called single photon timing. 

I.N. Duling III, All-fiber ring soliton laser mode locked with a nonlinear mirror. Opt. Lett. 16(8), 539 (1991) ... 

In mode locked fiber lasers significant nonlinearities and dispersion often exist in the laser cavity, and in some cases the pulse may undergo considerable spectral or temporal evolution eachroimd-trip of the cavity. In these lasers mode locking is better understood in the time domairt, whereby stable pulse generation simply reqnires prrlse self-rephcation every roimd trip of the laser cavity. In the latter view the pulses generated in mode locked fiber lasers may be regarded as stable modes of their laser cavity. 

In the previous section we discussed light and matter at equilibrium in a two-level quantum system. For the remainder of this section we will be interested in light and matter which are not at equilibrium. In particular, laser light is completely different from the thennal radiation described at the end of the previous section. In the first place, only one, or a small number of states of the field are occupied, in contrast with the Planck distribution of occupation numbers in thennal radiation. Second, the field state can have a precise phase-, in thennal radiation this phase is assumed to be random. If multiple field states are occupied in a laser they can have a precise phase relationship, something which is achieved in lasers by a teclmique called mode-locking Multiple frequencies with a precise phase relation give rise to laser pulses in time. Nanosecond experiments... 

In order to achieve a reasonable signal strength from the nonlinear response of approximately one atomic monolayer at an interface, a laser source with high peak power is generally required. Conuuon sources include Q-switched ( 10 ns pulsewidth) and mode-locked ( 100 ps) Nd YAG lasers, and mode-locked ( 10 fs-1 ps) Ti sapphire lasers. Broadly tunable sources have traditionally been based on dye lasers. More recently, optical parametric oscillator/amplifier (OPO/OPA) systems are coming into widespread use for tunable sources of both visible and infrared radiation. 

The development of ultrafast spectroscopy has paralleled progress in the teclmical aspects of pulse fomiation [Uj. Because mode-locked laser sources are tunable only with diflSculty, until recently the most heavily studied physical and chemical systems were those that had strong electronic absorption spectra in the neighbourhood of conveniently produced wavelengths. 

As one important example, the introduction of the prism-controlled, colliding-pulse, mode-locked (CPM) dye laser [12,13] led almost innnediately to developments in measurement teclmique with pulses of less than 100... 

These limitations have recently been eliminated using solid-state sources of femtosecond pulses. Most of the femtosecond dye laser teclmology that was in wide use in the late 1980s [11] has been rendered obsolete by tliree teclmical developments the self-mode-locked Ti-sapphire oscillator [23, 24, 25, 26 and 27], the chirped-pulse, solid-state amplifier (CPA) [28, 29, 30 and 31], and the non-collinearly pumped optical parametric amplifier (OPA) [32, 33 and 34]- Moreover, although a number of investigators still construct home-built systems with narrowly chosen capabilities, it is now possible to obtain versatile, nearly state-of-the-art apparatus of the type described below Ifom commercial sources. Just as home-built NMR spectrometers capable of multidimensional or solid-state spectroscopies were still being home built in the late 1970s and now are almost exclusively based on commercially prepared apparatus, it is reasonable to expect that ultrafast spectroscopy in the next decade will be conducted almost exclusively with apparatus ifom conmiercial sources based around entirely solid-state systems. 

Spence D E, Kean P N and Sibbett W 1991 60 fs pulse generation from a self-mode-locked Ti sapphire laser Qpt. Lett. 16 42—4... 

Asaki M T, Huang C-P, Garvey D, Zhou J, Kapteyn H C and Murnane M M 1993 Generation of 11 fs pulses from a self-mode-locked Tfsapphire laser Opt. Lett. 977 977-9... 

The importance of laser light, in brief, is tliat its base characteristics, coherence, spectral and polarization purity, and high brilliance allow us to manipulate its properties. Gain switching [i, 10] and mode locking [16] are prime examples of our ability to very specifically control tire laser output. It is easy to see why lasers are tire ideal sources for optoelectronic applications. 

Although 0-switching produces shortened pulses, typically 10-200 ns long, if we require pulses in the picosecond (10 s) or femtosecond (10 s) range the technique of mode locking may be used. This technique is applicable only to multimode operation of a laser and involves exciting many axial cavity modes but with the correct amplitude and phase relationship. The amplitudes and phases of the various modes are normally quite random. 

The result is that, for the case of a cavity operated with, say, seven modes, the output is like that in Figure 9.5 when the cavity is mode locked. Only the modes which have a node at one end of the cavity are output from the laser and all others are suppressed. 

One method of mode locking a visible laser is by placing an acoustic modulator in the cavity and driving it at a frequency of c/2d. 

Modacrylic Modacrylic fibers Modacrylics Modane Modeling Modeling systems Mode-locked lasers Model rocket engines Models... 

Fig. 4. Temporal pulse characteristics of lasers (a) millisecond laser pulse (b) relaxation oscillations (c) Q-switched pulse (d) mode-locked train of pulses, where Fis the distance between mirrors and i is the velocity of light for L = 37.5 cm, 2L j c = 2.5 ns (e) ultrafast (femtosecond or picosecond) pulse.

Another variation is the mode-locked dye laser, often referred to as an ultrafast laser. Such lasers offer pulses having durations as short as a few hundred femtoseconds (10 s). These have been used to study the dynamics of chemical reactions with very high temporal resolution (see Kinetic LffiASURELffiNTS). 

Nonlinear refraction phenomena, involving high iatensity femtosecond pulses of light traveling in a rod of Tfsapphire, represent one of the most important commercial exploitations of third-order optical nonlinearity. This is the realization of mode-locking ia femtosecond Tfsapphire lasers (qv). High intensity femtosecond pulses are focused on an output port by the third-order Kerr effect while the lower intensity continuous wave (CW) beam remains unfocused and thus is not effectively coupled out of the laser. 

---