Analysis of the stability of an active mode-locking pulsed laser for ultra-short pulses generation

Pulsed lasers have become very important owing to the great amount of applications, from communications to diverse medicine areas. Many works have reported the development of these kinds of sources which uses quite complex cavity configurations and that present instabilities in the output signal. In this work the analysis of a pulsed laser that uses a ring cavity with a length of 16.5 m is presented. A phase modulator (LiNbO3) controlled by an RF generator operated at a frequency of 12.5108 MHz was used to perform the mode lock. The modulator input has a birrefringent fiber then the light polarization affects the mode lock. Therefore it was necessary to perform an analysis and characterization in the input and output signals of the modulator in order to obtain more stable output pulses without requiring a continuous adjustment. The laser implemented with 2 modes of operation, active mode-lock and passive mode-lock. The obtained pulses whit temporal width of 7 ns FWHM for the frequency fundamental 12.5108 MHz and 781 -261-120-116 ps for the harmonic 5-10-16-20 .The results for the passive mode-lock the obtained pulses whit temporal width 2 ps and average power 200 W.