Comparative Study Of The Pump Beam Quality Effect On The Slope Efficiency In Kerr-Lens Mode-Locked Ti:Sapphire Laser

A compact and inexpensive pump source is in high demand for ultrafast Ti:sapphire lasers, which has emerged as a main workhorse in biomedical imaging because of its broad emission bandwidth[1]. The widespread of Ti:sapphire lasers is limited by its cost, in which the contribution of its pump source is major. Latest progress in the field of direct diode lasers (DDL) technology [2,3] in the wavelength region suitable for Ti:sapphire pumping arose the opportunity of the development of inexpensive DDL based pump sources. The main factor that limits their commercial use for pumping is their far-from-diffraction-limited beam quality and low output power per emitter.