Generation and evaluation of synchronous femtosecond and picosecond pulses in a dual-wavelength Ti:Sapphire laser

We obtain synchronous femtosecond and picosecond laser pulses by achieving cross mode locking in a double-cavity dual-wavelength femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser. The autocorrelations and the crosscorrelation show that the femtosecond and picosecond pulses are well synchronized, with a timing jitter less than 200 fs. Independent self mode locking in each laser cavity is governed mainly by group-velocity dispersion and self-phase modulation, whereas cross mode locking is dominated primarily by cross-phase modulation and gain competition. Meanwhile, FWHM and rms formalisms are compared and further utilized to characterize laser pulses. In addition, the timing jitter and the tuning range of the laser are analyzed and identified.