Continuously self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser that produces sub-50-fs pulses

Abstract
An external cavity coupled to a dispersion-compensated, self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser is shown to maintain cw mode locking to produce pulses as short as 47 fs. The same cavity arrangement is also shown to generate transform-limited pulses of 2-ps duration in the regime of linear external cavity mode locking.