Saturation of green absorption in titanium-doped sapphire laser crystals

Saturation of the pump-band absorption in Ti:sapphire has been observed by using 10-nsec, pi-polarized pulses of 532 nm with fluences up to 4 J/cm(2). A Frantz-Nodvik method was used for fitting the data and determining the saturation fluence (7.6 J/cm(2)) and the absorption cross section (4.9 x 10(-20)cm(2)) at 532 nm. The peak absorption cross section was calculated to be 6.4 x 10(-20) cm(2) at 490 nm. This value is in reasonably good agreement with other determination methods.