Highly efficient femtosecond Yb:KYW laser pumped by a single narrow-stripe laser diode

Yb-doped crystals have attracted strong interest during past few years especially in the development of efficient, simple and robust diode-pumped femtosecond lasers in the 1/spl mu/m spectral range. This article deals with the development of a low-threshold and highly efficient femtosecond Yb:KYW laser that incorporates a low-loss semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) for self-starting mode-locking and a narrow-stripe InGaAs laser diode as a pump source.