Abstract

A diode-pumped Nd:YLF laser has been acousto-optically mode locked at a 2-GHz repetition rate, giving pulse widths of 7 psec with an average power of 135 mW at a wavelength of 1.047,m. The 2-GHz pulse rate corresponds to a free-space cavity length of 7.5 cm, while the laser's actual cavity length is approximately 6.6 cm. The mode locker consists of a sapphire substrate with a lithium niobate transducer, giving 0.5 % loss modulation per watt. Stable mode-locked pulses were achieved for loss modulations of 1 % or greater. Diode-pumped, actively mode-locked solid-state la-sers show promise as compact, low-noise, long-lived sources of picosecond pulses. Applications for these lasers include optical testing of integrated circuits (e.g., electro-optic sampling, charge sensing, and volt-age-contrast e-beam sensing), photonic switching, op-tical communications, and generation of bursts of pi-cosecond electron pulses for seeding linear accelera-tors. Desirable qualities for such lasers would be pulse widths of less than 10 psec and relatively large