Expansion of Tunable Range of Pulsed Ti: sapphire Lasers by Nonlinear Optical Techniques

Abstract

Ti: sapphire laser is one of the most promissing solid-state tunable lasers for spectroscopic application. At first, the fundamental characteristics of a pulsed Ti: sapphire laser with an amplifier are analyzed and compared with experiments. A guide line to design a widely tunable high-power Ti: sapphire laser is shown. Next, various nonlinear optical methods to expand the tunable range are reviewed including higher harmonic generation, optical mixing and stimulated Raman scattering. Very wide continuous tunable range from VUV to IR can be obtained by the aid of Raman shifting.