Short cavity all-solid-state femtosecond Cr:LiSAF laser

We demonstrate a very short-cavity, all-solid-state Kerr-lens mode-locked Cr 3+ :LiSrAlF 6 laser using various materials of intracavity prisms for dispersion compensation. The minimum size of the laser cavity was 25 ×16 cm using on F8 prism pair material, and almost transform-limited 143 fs pulses were generated at a repetition rate of 262 MHz, which is the smallest femtosecond laser in the world to our knowledge. Changes in the cavity size and pulse repetition rate by changing the prism materials were examined, and the laser was able to generate almost transform-limited pulses shorter than 150 fs in the repetition rate range of 210–262 MHz.