Self-starting mode-locked cavity-dumped femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser employing a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror

We report on a novel design of a cavity-dumped Ti:sapphire laser employing a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) to assure self-starting. With pump powers as low as 3.5 W, a stable operation is achieved, producing pulses of about 90 fs duration and single pulse energies of up to 34 nJ at 800 kHz dumping rate. The suppression ratios of the preceeding and consecutive pulses are better than 350:1, thus making this system an ideal excitation source for time-correlated photon counting experiments.