Construction of a wavelength-tunable self-starting Kerr lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire

Abstract

We have successfully constructed a soft-aperturing, asymmetric cavity Kerr lens mode-locked (KLM) Ti:sapphire laser that is self-starting within 0.5 ms over 780-840 nm wavelength range without any additional starting devices or intracavity hard apertures. We believed that the soft-aperturing mechanism is essential in the self-starting KLM Ti:sapphire lasers and the round trip gain discrimination between CW and KLM modes of the Ti:sapphire laser is sufficient to support self-starting.