Two-color synchronously mode-locked femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser

Abstract

We report the simultaneous generation of two collinear synchronous mode-locked pulse trains, with central wavelength separations of 60 to 80 nm, from a single-cavity mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser. Near-transform-limited pulses of duration 50 to 70 fs were generated at each wavelength, with jitter of less than 20 fs between the two-color pulses. These pulses were directly used to generate infrared pulses centered at 9 μm, by difference-frequency mixing in an AgGaS₂ crystal.