We report on interferometric measurements of the thermo-optical aberrations of the laser medium of an Yb:YAG thin-disk laser in pumped and cw lasing conditions at several pump-power levels with a mean repeatability of 5 nm. These measurements build the basis for future intracavity compensation of the aberrations with our deformable mirror in order to improve the fundamental-mode efficiency.

We report a novel polarimetric fiber laser sensor for magnetic-field-current measurement that is stable to variation of temperature and strain because it employs a Faraday rotating mirror. We obtained a sensitivity of 10.24 kHzyA with good linearity and greatly improved the signal-to-noise ratio by reducing the number of laser cavity modes with the help of a saturable absorber.

We report what is believed to be the first demonstration of soft-x-ray interferometry of a plasma with a tabletop soft-x-ray laser. A Lloyd's mirror interferometer was used in combination with a very compact lambda = 46.9 nm capillary-discharge-pumped laser to map the electron density in the cathode region of a pinch plasma.

We have created a simple model to analyze the restrictions on superluminal ring laser gyroscopes arising from the absorption of coating materials. For a ring laser gyroscope with a cavity length of 15 cm, the scale factor enhancement is nearly impossible due to absorption from the high dispersion mirror. In order to obtain a practical superluminal ring laser gyroscope, the extinction coefficien...

A diode-end-pumped passively mode-locked femtosecond Tm-doped calcium lithium niobium gallium garnet (Tm:CLNGG) disordered crystal laser was demonstrated for the first time to our knowledge. With a 790 nm laser diode pumping, stable CW mode-locking operation was obtained by using a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror. The disordered crystal laser generated mode-locked pulses as short as 479...

We report on the generation of multi-wavelength dissipative soliton (DS) in an all normal dispersion fiber laser passively mode-locked with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). We show that depending on the strength of the cavity birefringence, stable single-, dual- and triple-wavelength DSs can be formed in the laser. The multi-wavelength soliton operation of the laser was experi...

A thermally fixed photorefractive Bragg grating is written in a single-mode Ti:Fe:Er:LiNbO3 channel waveguide and used to develop a distributed feedback-distributed Bragg reflector coupled cavity laser with a second broadband dielectric cavity mirror. The optically pumped (lambda(p) = 1480 nm, P = 130 mW) laser emits in single-frequency operation as much as 8 mW at lambda = 1557.2 nm with a slo...

The spectral properties of single molecules placed near a metallic surface are investigated at low temperatures. Because of the high quality factor of the optical resonance, a laser-induced shift of the molecular lines is evidenced for the first time. The shift dependence on the laser excitation intensity and on the dephasing rate of the transition dipole is studied. A simple theoretical model ...

Arrays of nanodots were directly patterned by interferometric lithography using a bright table-top 46.9 nm laser. Multiple exposures with a Lloyd's mirror interferometer allowed to print arrays of 60 nm FWHM features. This laser-based extreme ultraviolet interferometric technique makes possible to print different nanoscale patterns using a compact table-top set up.

We demonstrate a soliton fiber laser based on an anomalously dispersive erbium-doped fiber butt-coupled to a saturable absorber mirror for passive mode locking. The laser generates 180 fs pulses at a repetition rate of 491 MHz and exhibits a timing jitter as low as 20 fs over the frequency range 1 kHz-10 MHz.