SINGLE-FREQUENCY, INJECTION-SEEDED TI - SAPPHIRE RING LASER WITH HIGH TEMPORAL PRECISION

A three-mirror Ti:sapphire ring laser with a cavity length of 11 cm is injection seeded with a single-mode laser diode operating at 784 nm. The seed beam is injected into the ring cavity through the output coupler. The incident seed power is 11 mW. The ring laser is pumped with a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser. An efficiency of 40% is demonstrated. With the seed beam present, oscillation in the ring cavity is unidirectional, and the output is single frequency. The duration of the output pulse is 4 ns FWHM, and the temporal jitter with respect to the 532-nm pump pulse is less than +/- 300 ps. The spatial profile of the output beam is near diffraction limited (M2 < 1.1).