Abstract

Passive mode locking is a simple technique for direct production of short pulses from an excimer laser. Recently, Watanabe et al.¹ reported passive mode locking of a XeCl laser using BBQ and BPBD as saturable absorbers. They used an optical cavity with a dye cell in contact with the total reflectivity mirror, a partial transmission mirror of 70% reflectivity, and a focusing lens in front of the dye cell. Their results showed that low saturation intensity saturable absorbers are needed for efficient mode-locking, so that they did not get mode-locking operation with PTP dye because of its high saturation intensity. Moreover, the energy of the mode-locking pulse was only 0.4% of the initial energy of the XeCl laser output.

© 1985 Optical Society of America