Virtual Journal of Laser

David C. Brown, Thomas M. Bruno, Joseph M. Singley
We report the demonstration of a heat-fraction-limited CW Yb:YAG laser operating near 77 K with output at 1029 nm, pumped with a diffraction-limited room-temperature CW Nd:YAG laser operating at 946 nm. With a 50% reflectivity outcoupler, the average threshold absorbed pump power was 18.8 mW and ... [Opt. Express 18, 16573-16579 (2010)]

Wesley C. Parker, Nilay Chakraborty, Regina Vrikkis, Gloria Elliott, Stuart Smith, Patrick J. Moyer
A low-cost pulsed laser is used in conjunction with a homebuilt laser confocal-scanning epifluorescence microscope having submicron lateral and axial spatial resolution to determine cytoplasmic viscosity at specific intracytoplasmic locations in J774 mouse macrophage cells. Time-dependent ... [Opt. Express 18, 16607-16617 (2010)]

A. Kudlinski, M. Lelek, B. Barviau, L. Audry, A. Mussot
Using a low-cost microchip laser and a long photonic crystal fiber taper, we report a supercontinuum source with a very efficient visible conversion, especially in the blue region (around 420 nm). About 30 % of the total average output power is located in the 350–600 nm band, which is of ... [Opt. Express 18, 16640-16645 (2010)]

Kan Wu, Jia Haur Wong, Ping Shum, Songnian Fu, Chunmei Ouyang, Honghai Wang, E. J. R. Kelleher, A. I. Chernov, E. D. Obraztsova, Jianping Chen
Pump relative intensity noise (RIN) has been recognized as a major source of noise in mode-locked lasers. The coupling of RIN from the pump to the output of a passively mode-locked fiber laser (PMFL) is systematically investigated using a pump modulation technique. It is found that the linear RIN ... [Opt. Express 18, 16663-16670 (2010)]

Wei De Tan, Dingyuan Tang, Xiaodong Xu, Jian Zhang, Changwen Xu, Feng Xu, Lihe Zheng, Liangbi Su, Jun Xu
The authors report on the passive mode-locking and cw lasing performance of Yb3+: Sc_2SiO_5 (Yb: SSO) in an x-fold cavity end-pumped by a 978 nm single emitter. The laser produced a maximum cw output power of 2.73 W with a slope efficiency of 70%. Passive mode-locking of Yb: SSO was initiated using ... [Opt. Express 18, 16739-16744 (2010)]

Walter Lubeigt, Gerald M. Bonner, Jennifer E. Hastie, Martin D. Dawson, David Burns, Alan J. Kemp
Low birefringence synthetic single-crystal diamond was used as a Raman laser medium inside a Q-switched Nd:YVO_4 laser. A maximum average output power of 375mW was achieved at a wavelength of 1240nm and a repetition rate of 6.3kHz. This equates to a conversion efficiency of 4% from the diode laser ... [Opt. Express 18, 16765-16770 (2010)]

Yanhui Li, Zhensen Wu
The 3-D target information can be obtained directly by the analysis of the 1-D data of the pulse laser range profile (LRP). In this paper, a new calculational method to generate and process the LRP which is based on the lidar equation is established. The LRPs of different targets are simulated by ... [Opt. Express 18, 16788-16796 (2010)]

Sacha Bergeron, Samir Saïdi, Yves-Alain Peter
Integrated silica microdisk resonators can be used to create a variety of very high performance spectral filters. These filters can control the spectral emission of an erbium doped fiber laser. By modifying the number and sizes of the microdisks constituting these filters it is possible to produce ... [Opt. Express 18, 16797-16804 (2010)]

Selina Pekarek, Christian Fiebig, Max Christoph Stumpf, Andreas Ernst Heinz Oehler, Katrin Paschke, Götz Erbert, Thomas Südmeyer, Ursula Keller
We present a diode-pumped Yb:KGW laser with a repetition rate of 1 GHz and a pulse duration of 281 fs at a wavelength of 1041 nm. A high brightness distributed Bragg reflector tapered diode laser is used as a pump source. Stable soliton modelocking is achieved with a semiconductor saturable ... [Opt. Express 18, 16320-16326 (2010)]

Jeffrey F. Herbstman, Alan J. Hunt
Single femtosecond pulsed laser damage can be confined radially to regions smaller than the focus spot size due to the highly nonlinear mechanisms for energy absorption and ablation in transparent dielectrics. Along the propagation axis, however, we show that channels can be machined much deeper ... [Opt. Express 18, 16840-16848 (2010)]