ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors will discuss octave-spanning Ti:sapphire lasers that can be carrier-envelope (CE)-phase stabilized by self-referencing without additional external broadening. Erbium fiber-laser-based frequency synthesizers also represent an attractive alternative for metrological applications with turnkey operation. However, at present, the CE beat note of fiber lasers exhibits ~200 kHz linewidth in a 100 kHz resolution bandwidth, indicating increased CE phase fluctuations. This chapter reviews the laser dynamics and technology needed to achieve few-cycle laser pulses with octave-spanning spectra directly from a Ti:sapphire laser. The steady-state pulse formation can be understood in the following way. By symmetry the pulses are chirp-free in the middle of the dispersion cells. A chirp-free pulse starting in the center of the gain crystal, i.e., nonlinear segment, is spectrally broadened by the self-phase modulation and disperses in time due to the group-velocity dispersion, which generates a mostly linear chirp over the pulse.
