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In 1995 Dr. Róbert Szipõcs - the inventor of chirped mirrors -
and his colleagues at the Research Institute for Solid State Physics,
Budapest, Hungary, and at JATE University, Szeged, Hungary founded the
R&D Lézer-Optika Inc., the predecessor of the R&D Ultrafast Lasers Ltd.
Their aim was to put their scientific knowledge and experience into practice,
and to develop optical thin film components for high performance, compact
femtosecond laser sources.
Foundation of R&D Lézer-Optika Inc. was preceded by an important technical
innovation in the fields of optical dielectric mirror coatings and ultrafast
lasers in 1993: Dr. Róbert Szipõcs and his colleagues at the Optical
Coating Laboratory of the Research Institute for Solid State Physics,
Budapest, Hungary, developed special dielectric laser mirrors for femtosecond
laser systems that became known as chirped mirrors. First demonstrated
at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, these chirped mirrors
were used to build a Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti: sapphire laser containing
no intracavity prism, and generating optical pulses as short as 11 fs.
As a joint effort of research laboratories all around Europe including
Austria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and United
States of America, chirped mirror technology has matured.
In general, chirped mirrors offer a general solution for broadband dispersion
control and feedback in femtosecond laser systems. They offer the benefits
of a broader high-reflectivity range (as compared to low dispersion, standard
quarterwave mirrors) as well as engineerable dispersion over the high
reflectivity band. As a consequence, chirped mirror technology has the
potential to overcome limitations previously encountered when attempting
to produce shorter pulse laser oscillators. Furthermore, using chirped
mirror technology, it has become feasible to design and build more compact
and reliable laser sources than before.
In 1997 Lézer-Optika Inc. founded R&D Ultrafast Lasers Ltd. in
order to develop and produce femtosecond lasers. In the following years
R&D Ultrafast Lasers Ltd. has been involved in the research and implementation
of femtosecond techniques.
We are developing and selling tunable femtosecond lasers, femtosecond
Optical Parametric Oscillators and we are involved in research and development
of femtosecond laser applications (two photon microscopy, time resolved
spectroscopy).
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