Spectral narrowing of a 980 nm tapered diode laser bar

High-Power Diode Laser Technology and Applications IX, 2011

High power diode laser bars are interesting in many applications such as solid state laser pumping, material processing, laser trapping, laser cooling and second harmonic generation. Often, the free running laser bars emit a broad spectrum of the order of several nanometres which limit their scope in wavelength specific applications and hence, it is vital to stabilize the emission spectrum of these devices. In our experiment, we describe the wavelength narrowing of a 12 element 980 nm tapered diode laser bar using a simple Littman configuration. The tapered laser bar which suffered from a big smile has been "smile corrected" using individual phase masks for each emitter. The external cavity consists of the laser bar, both fast and slow axis micro collimators, smile correcting phase mask, 6.5× beam expanding lens combination, a 1200 lines/mm reflecting grating with 85% efficiency in the first order, a slow axis focusing cylindrical lens of 40 mm focal length and an output coupler which is 10% reflective. In the free running mode, the laser emission spectrum was 5.5 nm wide at an operating current of 30A. The output power was measured to be in excess of 12W. Under the external cavity operation, the wavelength spread of the laser could be limited to 0.04 nm with an output power in excess of 8 W at an operating current of 30A. The spectrum was found to be tuneable in a range of 16 nm.

2011

IET Optoelectronics, 2011

Tapered diode lasers in the red spectral range with nearly diffraction-limited output are prospective light sources for display applications and analytic methods such as fluorescence microscopy. The authors have studied the influence of the number of quantum wells and the lateral design of 660 nm high-power tapered diode lasers on the output power and the beam quality. From these investigations the authors have developed an optimised design and achieved a record output power of 1.5 W with a beam quality close to the diffraction limit (M 2 (1/e 2) ¼ 1.5). The authors also demonstrate operation over 4500 h at power levels between 0.5 and 1.0 W.

IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 2008

A wavelength-stabilized compact diode laser system emitting at 671 nm mounted on a microoptical bench with the dimensions of 13 mm 2 4 mm is presented. A reflecting Bragg grating was aligned on the rear side of a broad-area gain medium for wavelength stabilization at 671 nm. A maximum output power of 1.5 W was obtained together with a spectral width of 40 pm (full-width at half-maximum). At 1.0 W, a center wavelength stability below 20 pm over 5 h was determined. With these features, the devices are well-suited for spectroscopic applications.

Optics Letters, 2004

Spectral line narrowing (by a factor of 8) and stabilization of the emission wavelength (by a factor of 30) of multimode high-power laser diodes and arrays is demonstrated by use of volume Bragg gratings fabricated in high-stability inorganic photorefractive glasses. Applications include stabilization of pump laser diodes and arrays for solid-state lasers and metal-vapor lasers, spin hyperpolarization of noble gases used in medical imaging, and others.

Applied Optics, 2001

We have designed, fabricated, and characterized a micro-optical beam-shaping device that is intended to optimize the coupling of an incoherent, linearly extended high-power diode laser into a multimode fiber. The device uses two aligned diffractive optical elements ͑DOEs͒ in combination with conventional optics. With a first prototype, we achieved an overall efficiency of 28%. Straightforward improvements, such as antireflective coatings and the use of gray-tone elements, are expected to lead to an efficiency of approximately 50%. The device is compact, and its fabrication is suited for mass production at low cost. This micro-optical device, used in a range-finder measurement system, will extend the measurement range. In addition to the direct laser writing technique, which was used for fabrication of the DOEs of the prototype, we applied two other technologies for the fabrication of the micro-optical elements and compared their performance. The technologies were multiple-projection photolithography in combination with reactive-ion etching in fused silica and high-energy beam-sensitive glass gray-tone lithography in photoresist. We found that refractive-type elements ͑gray tone͒ yield better efficiency for large deflection angles, whereas diffractive elements ͑multilevel or laser written͒ give intrinsically accurate deflection angles.

2000

We demonstrate that appropriately designed external cavities can be used to frequency narrow high-power diode-array bars. Using a commercial 20-W array, we narrow the linewidth to 50 GHz with 14 W of cw output power. A magnifying telescope and a cylindrical collimating lens minimize broadening owing to curvature in the alignment of the diode-array elements.

2010

A new class of high power high brightness 808 nm QCW laser diode mini bars has been developed. With nLight's nXLT facet passivation technology and improvements in epitaxial structure, mini bars of 3 mm bar width with high efficiency design have tested to over 280 W peak power with peak efficiency over 64% on conduction cooled CS packages, equivalent to output power density near 130 mW/μm. These mini laser bars open up new applications as compact, portable, and low current pump sources. Liftests have been carried out on conduction cooled CS packages and on QCW stacks. Over 370 million (M) shots lifetest with high efficiency design has been demonstrated on CS so far without failure, and over 80 M shots on QCW stacks with accelerated stress lifetest have also proven high reliability on mini bars with high temperature design. Failure analysis determined that the failure mechanism was related to bulk defects, showing that mini laser bars are not prone to facet failure, which is consistent with the large current pulse test and failure analysis on high power single emitters.

Proceedings of SPIE, 2009

We present the experimental and theoretical evaluation of the coherent combining of an array of index-guided tapered laser diodes in an external Talbot cavity. A theoretical model taking into account the propagation inside the semiconductor device has been developed to determine the cavity spatial modes. In parallel, experiments have been realized with 10 emitters in a compact setup and a volume Bragg grating as the external mirror. 1.7 W have been obtained at 976 nm for the in-phase mode in a narrow laser line (<0.1 nm).