Suppression of far-field blooming in high-power broad-area diode lasers by optimizing gain distribution

Far-field blooming, a serious far-field dependence on driving current, affects the stability of beam quality and applications of broad-area(BA) diode lasers. In this Letter, the lateral ridge waveguide(LRW) is introduced to BA lasers by a simple and cost-effective approach to control the far-field stability and beam divergence. The influences of LRW length on output power, near-and far-field, are investigated and it is found that the optimized LRW length is able to improve both the far-field blooming and output power. The mechanism behind this is analyzed and a 0.13°/A dependence of lateral divergence angle on the injection current is achieved.     

High-power broad-area diode lasers for laser cooling

Received: 1 April 1996/Revised version: 24 September 1996     

High beam quality broad-area diode lasers by spectral beam combining with double filters

A modified spectral beam combining(SBC) approach based on double asymmetrical filters was proposed. By using this scheme, the high-order lateral modes at the edge of the far-field pattern can be suppressed in the external cavity, and the beam quality in the slow-axis direction was improved from 16.1 to 13.4 compared to the conventional SBC. In the meanwhile, the electrical-to-optical efficiency from the modified SBC was more than 40% with an output power of 34.1 W, which is similar to that of the conventional SBC.     

几项新技术在“闪光二号”加速器上的应用

为追踪国际上脉冲功率技术的发展方向,在“闪光二号”加速器上开展了水介质形成线并联技术、多级多通道气体开关技术和同步触发技术等研究。经过3维结构下电场分布的模拟计算和绝缘设计,采用3根6 Ω小水线并联组成了2 Ω水介质形成线,研制成功了作为主开关的3 MV多级多通道气体触发开关,并实现了3个多级多通道气体开关的并联运行;采用工作时延446 ns的同步触发系统实现了Marx发生器与主开关的延时同步运行。真空负压下的涡流循环冲刷消除水中气泡技术应用于水介质形成线上,有效消除了并联形成线汇聚结构处的气泡,提高了加速器运行的安全性。经过调试后,加速器重新获得了稳定的运行状态,几项新技术的应用获得成功。     

Narrow bandwidth operation of high-power broad-area diode laser using cascaded phase-conjugate injection locking

A broad-area laser is injection-locked by another broad-area laser that is also injection-locked by a single-mode diode laser. Two double-phase conjugate mirrors of photorefractive BaTaO₃ are used to couple the master laser beams to the first slave laser, and the first slave laser output to the second slave laser. One of the double-phase conjugate mirrors is built up with the beams from two broad-area lasers. Two slave lasers are oscillating in single longitudinal mode at 808.5 nm and the spectral width is the same as that of the master laser. Final single-mode output power from the second slave broad-area laser is 840 mW, which is limited by the power of the injection beam. This work verifies the possibility of the multi-stage cascaded injection locking of high-power diode lasers with phase-conjugate injection. Received: 18 November 1998 / Revised version: 29 January 1999 / Published online: 7 April 1999     

Self-compensation of thermal lens in high-power diode pumped solid-state lasers

We present a comprehensive model to describe the optic-thermal coupling in the diode pumped solid-state lasers (DPSSL). The thermal transition of particles at the upper laser level leads the heat-generation of laser crystals to depend on shape of the laser beam, while the laser field is also influenced by the temperature because of the thermal excitation of doped particles among various Stark levels. These effects, together with the usual thermal-optic effect that induces a fluctuation of the refraction index by an inhomogeneous temperature distribution, cause a complicated coupling between the laser field and the temperature field. We show that the optic-thermal coupling plays an important role in high-power DPSSL with larger size beam. That effect may yield a self-compensation for the thermal lens and improve the beam quality.     

Efficient Yb:KGW lasers end-pumped by high-power diode bars

The laser performance of Yb:KGW under end-pumping with high-power diode bars has been investigated. In one configuration, the pump is delivered through an optical fiber yielding a symmetric but unpolarized pump spot. In the second configuration, the pump is delivered through an optical lens system yielding a polarized but asymmetric pump spot. Both configurations resulted in a maximum optical to optical efficiency of 47% and a maximum power of 12.4 W has been generated with the fiber coupled pump source. The output power was limited by crystal fracture, which occurred at an estimated temperature gradient of 1.2×10⁵ K/m. Thermal lensing and laser tuning characteristics are also investigated. PACS 42.55.Xi; 42.60.Lh     

Sustained oscillations in GaInP/AlGalnP visible diode lasers

We report the observation of sustained oscillations and pulsation behaviour in various GaInP/AlGaInP 670 nm diode lasers. We present experimental dependences of the oscillation strength and frequency as functions of diode structure, temperature and drive current. We explore the resonant excitation of this oscillation using both an r.f. current signal and a tunable-repetition-rate picosecond laser source. When a diode laser with a weak internal oscillation is coupled to an external cavity, strong pulsing behaviour is observed, and we attribute this behaviour to self-mode-locking.     

Multi-point side pumping scheme of fiber lasers for high-power diode arrays

A multi-point side pumping scheme of double-clad fiber lasers was presented for high-power diode arrays. It made use of multiple dielectric transmission gratings to realize high coupling efficiency and low pump light leakage ratio simultaneously. Appropriate material and practical structural parameters of the transmission gratings were chosen and designed by using a rigorous Eigen-mode theory combined with a genetic algorithm (GA) and a quasi-Newton method. The GA provided initial parameter values for the quasi-Newton method to get the final optimal results. For TE-polarized pump lights, a perfect transmission grating structure was found for side pumping and the coupling efficiency (CE) of 98% can be achieved. Meanwhile, the CE is 83% for TM-polarized pump lights. And the leakage ratios of the pump lights were only 11.3% and 4.9% for TE- and TM-polarized when a multi-point side pumping scheme was adopted.     

Improving the performance of high-power broad-area lasers by suppressing cavity modes propagating in the lateral dimension

We first study the effect of cavity modes propagating in the lateral dimension on high-power semiconductor lasers with a large stripe width. A sidewall microstructure was fabricated to prevent optical feedback of lateral resonant modes.Theoretically, we demonstrate the existence of lateral resonant modes in the Fabry–Perot cavity with a large stripe width.Experimentally, we design the corresponding devices and compare them with conventional broad-area diode lasers. About a 15% reduction in thres...     

Improving the modulation efficiency of high-power distributed Bragg reflector tapered diode lasers

Different measures to improve the modulation efficiency of a distributed Bragg reflector tapered diode laser emitting at 1060 nm were investigated. Due to the 6-mm long cavity, the device reached an output power of 10 W with a nearly diffraction-limited beam quality. The input currents to the ridge-waveguide (RW) and tapered gain-region sections can be independently controlled. This allows a low-current modulation of the optical output power in the Watt range. Under optimized quasi-static conditions the power could be modulated between 0.2 and 3.1 W (4.8 W) by a variation of the RW current between 0 and 50 mA (350 mA). Due to the integrated 6th order surface Bragg grating the emission wavelength remains within the spectral range of 80 pm.     

High-fidelity front-end for high-power, high temporal quality few-cycle lasers

A 80???J, 6?fs, CEP-stable high-contrast injector is demonstrated. The device relies on standard pulse post-compression in hollow-core fiber followed by a temporal filter based on cross-polarized wave generation. Pulses with a Gaussian spectrum over 350?nm, centered at 750?nm, are generated. Temporal measurements show that the contrast of the few-cycle pulses is enhanced on a femtosecond and picosecond time scale. The carrier-envelope phase stability is preserved (0.3?rad RMS). These performances make the system an ideal seed laser for high-power, high-contrast OPCPA systems.     

Beam combining of a high-power laser diode bar on a temperature gradient heat sink

A new wavelength beam combining technique for a high-power laser diode bar by using a temperature gradient heat sink has been proposed. The thermal controlling principle of the temperature heat sink has been discussed. It has been proved by experiment that the linear temperature distribution, which generates linear wavelength spread of the output beams from a LD bar, can be obtained by introducing a temperature gradient heat sink and the output beams can be focused into a relative small spot by using the Czerny-Turner beam shaping system.     

Improvement of the beam quality of a broad-area diode laser using asymmetric feedback from an external cavity

In this work, the use of an asymmetric feedback technique for improving the beam quality of a broad-area diode laser is investigated using numerical simulations. A mirror stripe is placed in the external cavity to select lateral mode and provide asymmetric feedback. The width and the position of the mirror stripe are optimized to improve the beam quality. The simulation results show a good beam quality of 0.7° FWHM and M ² value of 2.69.     

High-brightness diode lasers

The basic concepts and some modelling aspects of high-brightness semiconductor lasers are reviewed. The technology of lasers with a tapered gain-region is described. They provide the highest brightness of a semiconductor source with continuous wave emission in the visible and near infrared spectral range. Experimental results are presented for tapered lasers emitting at 735 nm and 808 nm. Output powers of 3 W were achieved in nearly diffraction limited beams. To cite this article: H. Wenzel et al., C. R. Physique 4 (2003).     

Grating feedback in a 810 nm broad-area diode laser

Narrow linewidth, single spectral mode operation has been obtained in a high power, 810 nm broad-area diode laser in an extended cavity configuration with a grating as external reflector (grating feedback). For stable operation it was necessary to misalign the feedback slightly in the plane of the laser junction. Characteristics of the thus obtained laser system are a linewidth below 5 MHz, an output intensity of about 50% of the free running power, a large-scale tuning range of 15 nm and continuous scanning over 4 GHz. In the spatial domain, the laser remains multimode and astigmatic. To show the practical applicability of this system, saturated absorption of a krypton line is demonstrated.     

Study on a broad-area laser diode with external cavity feedback

The external cavity feedback of a broad-area laser diode is investigated. In Fourier optic methods, the inserted prism in an external cavity can be interpreted as a spatial filter in the Fourier plane of the laser diode. The transverse mode can be selected by changing the position of the filter. As the result of a self-consistency theoretical analysis, the output beam of the external cavity has a single-lobed far-field profile. It agrees well with the experiment result. The beam times-diffraction-limit-factor M² is measured to be 1.16.     

In-phase output beam from broad-area diode array using Talbot cavity

The robust phase locking of a linear diode array consisting of 49 broad-area emitters was demonstrated.The single lobe in the far field with output power of 0.83 W was observed. The far-field divergence was reduced to 2.0 mrad. The spectral bandwidth was reduced from 1.7 to 0.13 nm.     

Beam quality considerations of high power Nd:YAG lasers

High power Nd:YAG lasers with fiber optic beam delivery have introduced new capabilities for material processing applications. Here, we present the stable resonator design for high power Nd:YAG lasers to optimize beam quality for fiber optic transmission. Dependence of beam parameters on position and dioptric power of thermal lens has been investigated and optimized to achieve efficient fiber optic beam delivery. With the optimum resonator configuration, an efficient fiber optic beam delivery over the entire operating range of input power has been achieved. The results of stable resonator design with good beam quality and output power have been presented.