Diode-pumped prism-free Ti:sapphire oscillator delivering 10-fs pulses

We report a diode-pumped prism-free Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire oscillator delivering 10-fs pulses using a simple four-mirror cavity. Intracavity dispersion is compensated exclusively with chirped mirrors, without the use of prism pairs. Near-transform-limited pulses with a duration of 10.1 fs were generated at a central wavelength of 770 nm with a spectral bandwidth of 65.7 nm (FWHM). Despite the poor beam quality of the pump diode (M² = 14.77 × 1.55), the mode-locked output exhibits near-diffraction-limited beam quality (M² = 1.02 × 1.00) and long-term power stability of 0.28% (RMS) over 8 hours. The demonstrated system provides a compact and robust ultrafast laser platform with reduced complexity, suitable for practical ultrafast laser applications.