Shinki NAKAMURA^1,2,3*, Yuto HIKITA¹, Hiroyasu SONE⁴, Takayo OGAWA³, and Satoshi WADA³

¹Department of Media and Telecommunications Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Ibaraki University, Hitachi, Ibaraki 316-8511, Japan
²Research Center for Applied Atomic Sciences (iFRC), Ibaraki University, Tokai, Ibaraki 319-1106, Japan
³The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan
⁴Kitami Institute of Technology, Kitami, Hokkaido 090-8507, Japan

(Received September 7, 2013; Accepted December 3, 2013)

A high-power diode-pumped passively mode-locked Yb:YAG ceramic laser was demonstrated. An average output power of 3.80 W with a pulse duration of 433 fs at a repetition rate of 90.9 MHz was obtained at a wavelength of 1050 nm using a 2% output coupler. A peak power of 96.5 kW was also obtained. To the best of our knowledge, these are the highest reported average power and peak power for a diode-pumped mode-locked Yb:YAG ceramic laser.

Key words: mode-locked lasers, diode-pumped lasers, ultrafast lasers, ytterbium laser, Yb:YAG

^*E-mail address: nakamura@mx.ibaraki.ac.jp