Sub-50-fs widely tunable Yb:CaYAlO4 laser pumped by 400-mW single-mode fiber-coupled laser diode

Yb:CaYAlO4 has been investigated spectroscopically and compared to better known Yb:CaGdAlO4. It turns out that both materials show very similar spectroscopic parameters relevant to ultrafast lasers design. Employing single-mode fiber-coupled 400-mW laser diode at 976 nm we measured pulses as short as 43 fs, and broad tunability of 40 nm with a simple single-prism setup.