Generation of 15 W femtosecond laser pulse from a Kerr-lens mode-locked Yb: YAG thin-disk oscillator

We demonstrated a robust power-scalable Kerr-lens mode-locked (KLM) operation based on a Yb:YAG thin-disk oscillator. 15-W, 272-fs pulses were realized at a repetition rate of 86.7 MHz with an additional Kerr medium and a 2.5 mm hard aperture in the cavity. 247-fs pulses with an average power of 11 W could also be obtained by using a 2.4 mm hard aperture. Based on this shorter pulse, high efficient second-harmonic generation (SHG) was performed with a 1.7-mm-long LiB₃O₅ (LBO) crystal. The SHG laser power was up to 5 W with the power fluctuation RMS of 1% measured over one hour.