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The idea of operating lasers at low temperatures is not exactly new: the second laser in
history already was a cryogenic one [1]. While this concept was originally used just because
In high-power laser sources, thermal effects such as depolarization loss, thermal lensing or
even fracture of the laser crystal can be a real problem limiting the performance. A number
meaning cooling of the gain medium to low temperatures such as 77 K (the temperature of
liquid nitrogen) or even 4 K (liquid helium). The main effects of such cooling are:
• The thermal conductivity of the gain medium is strongly increased, mainly because
the mean free path length of phonons is increased. Therefore, temperature gradients
• The thermal expansion coefficient is also strongly reduced. This together with the
reduced temperature gradients reduces thermal lensing from bulging and stress, and
lensing.
• The laser and absorption cross sections of rare earth ions are increased, essentially
reduced, and the laser gain is increased. Consequently, the threshold pump power is
reduced, and shorter pulses can be obtained in Q-switched operation. The slope
• The thermal population of the lower laser level in quasi-three-level gain media is
reduced, which again reduces the threshold pump power and leads to laser
designs with increased power efficiency [5]. For example, Yb:YAG for 1030-nm
level system at 77 K. The same is true for Er:YAG lasers emitting at 1.6 μm.
• Depending on the gain medium, the strength of certain quenching processes may
be reduced.
The combination of these factors allows for strong improvements in laser performance. In
particular, cryogenically cooled lasers have the potential for generating much higher output
powers without excessive thermal effects, i.e. with good beam quality.
A possible concern is that the bandwidth of both the emission and absorption of the cryo-
cooled laser crystal may be reduced, which may lead to a narrower range for wavelength
tuning and to more stringent requirements on the linewidth and wavelength stability of the
Cryogenic cooling may be achieved with a cryogen such as liquid nitrogen or helium, ideally
circulating through channels in a cooling finger which is attached to the laser crystal. The
cryogen may be taken from some supply, which is refilled from time to time, or recycled in a
closed loop, containing e.g. a Stirling engine. To avoid condensation, one usually has to
Of course, the concept of operating the laser crystal at a very low temperature can also be
Although cryogenic cooling arrangements certainly add to the complexity of such a laser
system, more conventional cooling systems are also not always very simple, and the great
effectiveness of cryogenic cooling may allow for a reduction in complexity at other places.
The broad laser bandwidth and excellent material properties of titanium-doped sapphire
(Ti:sapphire) have proved ideal for small- and large-scale ultrafast lasers and systems.1
Incorporating cryogenic cooling into an ultrafast Ti:sapphire laser amplifier can reduce
makes ultrafast systems more versatile and is also surprisingly cost-effective for a variety of
lasers, and very high-average-power lasers of this type (approximately 100 W) have existed
for some time. Previous-generation Ti:sapphire systems were incapable of using these pump
light from the pump laser is focused on the Ti:sapphire rod, and during amplification a
photon at approximately 532 nm, (2.33 eV) is absorbed by the Ti:sapphire and emitted as a
photon at approximately 800 nm (1.55 eV). The rest of the energy-roughly one-third of the
incident power-is converted into heat. With a 100-W pump laser focused into a submillimeter
spot, the heat load creates very strong temperature gradients that distort the optical
properties of the crystal, producing distortion of the amplified pulse. The distortion results
from the changing index of refraction of the sapphire with temperature, and the physical
the optical system. Proper amplifier design can compensate for this lens to some extent, but
large optical aberrations remain. Hence, early-generation Ti:sapphire systems were limited
were also limited because thermal lensing limits the pulse repetition rate.
energy particle generation-would become much more useful as tools for research or industry
experiments require very high signal-to-noise ratios to find small signals buried in large
The obvious solution to the thermal-lensing problem would be to find a better gain material,
conductive transparent material. And Ti:sapphire has a broader bandwidth than any other
gain material-ideal for ultrafast applications. So Ti:sapphire will likely be the material of
choice for high-performance ultrafast lasers for some time to come. Among numerous
techniques proposed to address thermal lensing, the most obvious has been to compensate
with corrective optics. This approach can improve the situation, but it also makes the system
A very effective solution, although less familiar to laser users, is to aggressively cool the
laser crystal. It has been known for some time that cryogenic cooling of Ti:sapphire
improves its characteristics, but our group was the first to implement it in ultrafast systems
during the late 1990s. We first used cryogenic cooling for the “power amplifier” after the
preamplifier in an ultrafast system. Later we realized that the realbenefit of cryocooling is its
use in the regenerative or multipass amplifier itself, because this is the place where most of
the gain in a system occurs and where optical aberrations accumulate. Cryocooling
technology thus proved to be much more useful than originally anticipated, and was also
patented.2
Ti:sapphire crystal pumped with a typical 500-µm-diameter spot. At 25-W pump power, the
thermal lens corresponds to a 2.5-cm lens at room temperature, but to a larger than 1000-
cm lens at 77 K. At 100 W, the thermal lens is smaller than 1 cm at 300 K, but still several
The advantage of cryocooling is significant and the technology for implementing it is simple,
a greater than 200× decrease in thermally induced distortions in the beam being amplified
There are two reasons for this dramatic improvement. First, the thermal conductivity of
sapphire increases by a factor of roughly 39 when the temperature is decreased from 300 K
amplifier will now act as a nearly ideal gain medium, with very little optical aberration even
for very high pump power. This makes it possible to take advantage of very high-average-
power 532-nm Q-switched pump lasers-at least four different manufacturers make lasers in
greater pump power can allow for either increased energy per pulse, or increased repetition
FIGURE 3. In the Dragon ultrafast laser system, pulses are generated using a modelocked
Ti:sapphire laser that can generate sub-10-fs pulses of 100- to 150-nm bandwidth.
cryopumps. After pulse stretching and single-pulse selection, pulses are injected into a
simple multipass amplifier setup allowing for the generation of very short-duration 15- to 30-
fs pulses. After 8 to 13 passes in the amplifier, the pulse reaches saturation, is extracted,
and a telescope expands the beam to avoid thermal loading on the compressor
to 25% to 30%-before pulse compression losses. The improvement occurs even for
cryogenically cooled systems that use relatively modest (about 25 W) pump lasers and
makes cryogenic technology much more cost-effective than originally anticipated. The result
is a “no compromise” Ti:sapphire laser system that can generate pulses as short as 20 to 30
fs, with near-diffraction-limited focusability, and with significantly more output power. The
Cryocooling technology has been implemented in our Dragon ultrafast amplifier system,
which was first introduced in 2002, and has since been used with a large variety of diode-
pumped and lamp-pumped pump lasers (see Fig. 3). We have implemented one-stage and
system can be pumped at up to 20-kHz repetition rate, and can deliver an average power of
up to 10 W (see Fig. 4).3 The uncompressed output power of 16 W results in a 20- to 30-fs
compressed output power of more than 10 W, with a pulse energy of more than 10 mJ at
FIGURE 4. The cryogenically cooled Dragon laser generates a pulse with duration of less
then 30 fs (left), and M2 of about 1.3 in the x and y axes, and total optical-to-optical
conversion efficiency of better than 25%, even when operating with nearly TEM00 mode
The limits of cryogenically cooled amplifier technology are essentially the average power
limits of the pump lasers. The theoretical fracture limit-a power level at which the crystal
sustains physical damage-for end pumping of Ti:sapphire is about 1.2 kW per face, meaning
that it should be feasible to construct kilowatt-scale ultrafast lasers in the future.4 In the lab,
a very compact form factor.5 As new-generation pump lasers are introduced, ultrafast table-
top amplifier systems can be straightforwardly developed with output powers of tens to
hundreds of watts, at only modest increase in cost.
One critical area that requires improvement is in the pulse compression process. At high
average powers, the pulse compression gratings show thermal distortion. Creative
approaches can likely get around this problem, however. One approach would be to use
demonstrated called downchirped pulse amplification (DPA), which turns the conventional
CPA process on its head. In DPA the pulse stretcher generates a negatively chirped pulse
rather than a positively chirped one.6 The pulse is then amplified, and recompressed using
positive material dispersion from a block of glass, which does not absorb any light or