Ultrafast solid-state oscillators and high-power amplifiers based on broadband, multisite Yb-doped crystals

The extremely wide range of application of high power, ultrashort laser pulses pushed forward the scientific and industrial research in this field during the last decades. Taking advantage of the continuous developments in semiconductor laser technology, diode-pumped Ytterbium-doped solid state lasers operating at 1 ?m emerged as a flexible, efficient and cost-competitive solution in a market previously dominated by more complex and expensive Ti:Sapphire laser systems. Thanks to their high absorption and emission cross section and their good mechanical properties, Yb-doped tungstates received early attention [1] and are presently employed in many market-available products. However, their emission bandwidth is not large enough to easily sustain pulses in the 100-fs range and their relatively low and anisotropic thermal conductivity lead to a limitation in their potential power up-scaling. As a consequence of the increasing demand for higher power and shorter pulse durations, several crystalline hosts exhibiting a favorable combination of good thermo-mechanical properties and much wider emission bandwidth have been recently proposed [2,3] or re-discovered [4].