Optically Pumped Saturable Bragg Reflectors: Nonlinear Spectroscopy and Application in Ultrafast Lasers

A detailed study of the changes in the nonlinear optical response of a saturable Bragg reflector (SBR) in the presence of continuous-wave (CW) optical pumping was performed. A model of the heating dynamics within the device under such nonresonant external optical pumping was also configured. In this way, it was shown that fast optically induced heating could be used to externally control the behavior of the SBR. This external optical pumping of the SBR is shown to be an effective method for rapid (~75 μs) switching between CW and femtosecond pulse operation of a passively mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser.