Ultrafast (picosecond) laser oscillator for educational use

Here, we present a description of an inexpensive ultrafast self-starting passively mode-locked laser oscillator that can be constructed using widely available off-the-shelf optical components. Such a laser system can be used to teach students the principles of solid state laser engineering, demonstrate a number of nonlinear optical phenomena, and perform qualitative and quantitative comparisons between numerical laser modeling and experimental results.