Stability regime study of a nonlinear mirror mode-locked laser

A diode array pumped nonlinear mirror mode-locked (ML) laser is developed and the regime of the stable operation for such a system is found to occur for a little detuning of intra-cavity second harmonic phase-matching. The existing theory of mode-locking using a fast saturable absorber (FSA) is used to derive corresponding equivalent parameters for a fast nonlinear mirror saturable absorber. The condition for stable single pulse ML operation is evaluated in terms of small signal gain of the laser medium and small signal nonlinear loss. The analysis explains the experimental observations and differentiates the regime of operation in ML, Q-switching and cw mode-locking.