Electro-optically cavity-dumped ultrashort-pulse Ti:sapphire oscillator.

We report the demonstration of what we believe is the first electro-optically cavity-dumped short-pulse Ti:sapphire oscillator. By designing a novel ultrabroadband, zero-dispersion, zero-insertion-loss polarizer we have obtained single-pulse energies of >200 nJ directly from the oscillator at a repetition rate of 1 kHz. The pulse duration is <20 fs with >10 MW peak power and high contrast (>2000) between the pulses immediately preceding and following the main pulse. This system is well suited for white-light continuum generation and seeding multipass or regenerative amplifiers.