Menhir Photonics’ robust and reliable ultra low-noise ultrafast seeders are now a reference at 1.5 um. At 1030 nm, we present a flexible concept using our new MENHIR-1030 at 160 MHz together with nearly lossless resonant EOM pulse-picking to serve as ultra-low noise seeder for amplifier systems requiring 80 MHz or 40 MHz repetition rate. We provide >1 nJ of pulse energy while maintaining the high robustness and compactness of a high repetition rate system, combined with state-of-the art low jitter. The passively stable MENHIR-1030 can be actively stabilized for utmost stability in amplifier applications. We will review the laser's key parameters with our innovative concept and details on key applications from our customers such as enhancement cavity pumping and high-power amplification.
Space lidar instruments for missions like AEOLUS or MERLIN require advanced high-power laser systems with according technical and financial effort. In order to increase the impact of such missions, it is advantageous to expand the versatility of their instruments. In the case of trace gas sensing, the ability to detect multiple trace gas species with the same instrument greatly enhances their value. Multi-species trace gas differential absorption lidar (DIAL) systems require absolute frequency referencing across large spectral bandwidths. While absorption cell based references need individual lasers at online and offline wavelengths for each species, a broadband mode locked laser – offering a frequency comb – can provide the required frequency accuracy over the complete spectral range of the lidar instrument. In the frame of the LEMON project, we developed a combined design for an absolute frequency reference based on a wavemeter for coarse frequency determination (<500 MHz accuracy) and a broadband mode locked laser for precise frequency detection by means of heterodyne beat generation. It features a large spacing of 1 GHz and is optimized for spectroscopic lidar applications covering the spectral range from 980 nm to 1100 nm and 1500 nm to 2300 nm. The achieved accuracy of <100 kHz of the optical frequency, satisfies the requirements needed to atmospheric gas analysis from space. The broadband approach offers a cost-effective solution to address multiple gas species simultaneously. The system can also be adapted to different spectral ranges of interest for gas spectroscopy and other applications. Additional presentation content can be accessed on the supplemental content page.
Ultrafast lasers are key tools for micromachining and medical applications, but also in a growing numbers of domains like telecoms, aerospace and microwave photonics, which are currently limited by the lack of reliability of the lasers and the achievable repetition rate. Menhir Photonics has now successfully demonstrated and deployed real-turnkey ultrafast laser oscillators at 1.5 um and GHz repetition rate with an unprecedent robustness. Reaching now up to 2.5 GHz of fundamental repetition rate and the lowest phase noise and timing jitter on the market, the MENHIR-1550 was already qualified for Space. The latest development of the MENHIR-1550 at 2.5 GHz will be presented (first commercial product of its kind) as well as the newest applications that it enabled worldwide, in the fields of green-house gases monitoring from Space, very fast dual-comb spectroscopy or photonics analog-to-digital converter.
Photoconductive emitters and receivers are widely accepted as the best combination for applications requiring broadband and high dynamic range and are nowadays deployed in most commercially available systems. Novel laser sources with higher repetition rate and power levels are a promising route towards further improvements in this area. We present our first steps in this direction by combining state-of-the-art emitters and receivers with an ultra-stable commercial fs laser (MENHIR-1550 SERIES) at 1 GHz repetition rate as the optical source. The output of the laser is amplified and compressed by a commercial fiber amplifier setup. In this experiment, we use 17 mW as the probe beam and 30 mW as the pump beam with a pulse duration of 150 fs, as these are the best operation points for the emitter and receiver available. The emitter is based on iron doped InGaAs in a strip line geometry with an active region of 50 μm x 50 μm while a fiber coupled dipole antenna with a 10 μm gap is used as the receiver. We demonstrate a 1 GHz repetition rate terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) system with a dynamic range of 73 dB and a bandwidth of 3.5 THz using state-of-the-art THz photoconductive emitter and receiver with a measurement time of 60 s. This result is part of a larger effort to understand the compromises to be realized in terms of repetition rate and average power to take photoconductive emitters and receivers to the next step in dynamic range enhancement.
We report a compact ultrafast solid-state laser source with a pulse repetition rate tunable in the range of 0.5 – 1.3 GHz. The optical cavity design allows a user to vary the repetition rate only by moving the mirrors. The Yb:KYW crystal-based laser emits 250 fs pulses at a central wavelength of 1040nm and the SESAM modelocking enables self-starting. An average power up to 150 mW is achieved using a stabilized single mode pump source at 981 nm, emitting up to 800 mW. In continuous wave mode, up to 270 mW were measured with an optical-to-optical efficiency of 33%.
We present timing jitter measurements of a free-running SESAM modelocked VECSEL generating 8-ps pulses with
1.88-GHz repetition rate and 80-mW average output power. We observed very good performance comparable with iondoped
solid-state-lasers which typically show excellent stability. We measured the two-sided noise power spectral
density at the 10th harmonic of the laser output with the von der Linde method. The rms timing jitter integrated over an
offset frequency range from 100 Hz to 100 kHz gives a free-running timing jitter of ≈400 fs which is an upper limit
because the measurement was already system noise limited above 10 kHz.
We demonstrate wafer-scale integration of a saturable absorber in a surface emitting semiconductor laser. Vertical
external cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) have high quality circular output beams, 2D-array scalability, and
high average power. To date, ultrafast VECSELs required a folded cavity with a separate saturable absorber device for
passive modelocking. In the result presented here, we integrate the saturable absorber into the same semiconductor
wafer, optimize its performance for integration with quantum dots and demonstrate stable passive modelocking in a
simple straight external cavity which allows for a fully monolithically wafer-integrated structure to reduce cost and
improve ease of mass production. We refer to this class of devices as the modelocked integrated external-cavity surface emitting laser (MIXSEL). Such devices would be ideally suited for many applications where the current ultrafast laser technology is considered to be too bulky and expensive.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.