Antimonide semiconductor saturable absorber for 1.5 /spl mu/m

Self-starting continuous-wave passive modelocking of an Er:Yb:glass laser at 1535 nm is demonstrated with the first antimonide semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). The Er:Yb:glass laser produces 20 ps pulses at 61 MHz. This laser was used to characterise the nonlinear optical parameters of the metal organic vapour phase epitaxy grown SESAM.