23 Feb 2007 A passive mode-locking device, the saturable absorber mirror (SAM), can be used to mode-lock a wide range of laser cavities. A SAM consists of a Bragg-mirror on a semiconductor wafer like GaAs, covered by an absorber layer and a more or less sophisticated top film system, determining the saturable loss.
Although semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors have been employed for mode-locking in a wide variety of laser cavities, the SAM has to be designed for each specific application. The differing loss, gain spectrum, internal cavity power, etc, of each laser necessitates slightly different absorber characteristics.
Greyhawk Optics online store has a wide selection of SAMs with a typical lead time of only one week. |
