Hybrid Q-switched broadband laser with low timing jitter

Farid El Bassri (1) , Florent Doutre (1) , Nicolas Mothe (1) , Lionel Jaffres (1) , Dominique Pagnoux (1) , Vincent Couderc (1) , Alain Jalocha (2)

1 XLIM-PHOTONIQUE - PHOTONIQUE
2 CILAS - Département de Photonique

We present a novel broadband laser source based on a dual cavity in which a subnanosecond passively Q-switched microchip laser is coupled with a long cavity including an acousto-optic modulator (AOM) and a microstructured optical fiber working as a non linear medium. This active-passive Q-switched laser source emits pulses as short as those emitted by the free running microchip laser (~600 ps). The time pulse emission is governed by the AOM allowing tunable repetition rate from 0 to more than 4 kHz with a temporal jitter reduced to less than 50 ns, i.e. a 600-fold reduction compared to that of the free running microchip. Furthermore, thanks to spectral broadening in the microstructured fiber, this source emits a supercontinuum from 700 nm to 1700 nm.

Farid El Bassri, Florent Doutre, Nicolas Mothe, Lionel Jaffres, Dominique Pagnoux, et al.. Hybrid Q-switched broadband laser with low timing jitter. Optics Express, 2012, 20 (2), pp.1202-1212. ⟨10.1364/OE.20.001202⟩. ⟨hal-00688237⟩