Tunable femtosecond laser based on the Nd3+:BaLaGa3O7disordered crystal

We demonstrate clear inhomogeneous linewidth broadening for the disordered laser crystal Nd:BaLaGa 3 O 7 (Nd:BLG), which is very promising for the replacement of Nd:glass for ultrafast sources in multiwatt power applications. A Nd:BLG laser oscillator passively mode-locked and pumped by a Ti:sapphire laser generated pulses of 316-fs duration at 1060 nm, whose spectrum completely fills the fluorescence peak at such wavelength. More interestingly, sub-picosecond pulses were smoothly tunable in a 20-nm range, from 1070 to 1090 nm. The shortest pulses achieved were 290 fs long, centered at 1075 nm.