Abstract:We demonstrate spectral beam combining of a 980 nm tapered diode laser bar. The combined beam from 12 tapered emitters on the bar yielded an output power of 9.3 W at 30 A of operating current. An M 2 value of 5.3 has been achieved along the slow axis. This value is close to that of a free running single tapered emitter on the bar at the same current level. The overall spectral beam combining efficiency was measured to be 63%. ©2010 Optical Society of America

Up to 16 W output power has been obtained using spectral beam combining of two 1063 nm DBR-tapered diode lasers. Using a reflecting volume Bragg grating, a combining efficiency as high as 93.7% is achieved, resulting in a single beam with high spatial coherence. The result represents the highest output power achieved by spectral beam combining of two single element tapered diode lasers. Since spectral beam combining does not affect beam propagation parameters, M 2 -values of 1.8 (fast axis) and 3.3 (slow axis) match the M 2 -values of the laser with lowest spatial coherence. The principle of spectral beam combining used in our experiments can be expanded to combine more than two tapered diode lasers and hence it is expected that the output power may be increased even further in the future.

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We demonstrate two different schemes for the spectral narrowing of a 12 emitter 980 nm gain guided tapered diode laser bar. In the first scheme, a reflective grating has been used in a Littman Metcalf configuration and the wavelength of the laser emission could be narrowed down from more than 5.5 nm in the free running mode to 0.04 nm (FWHM) at an operating current of 30 A with an output power of 8 W. The spectrum was found to be tunable within a range of 16 nm. In the second scheme, a volume Bragg grating has been used to narrow the wavelength of the laser bar from over 5 nm to less than 0.2 nm with an output of 5 W at 20 A. To our knowledge, this is the first time spectral narrowing has been performed on a gain guided tapered diode laser bar. In the Littman Metcalf configuration, the spectral brightness has been increased by 86 times and in the volume Bragg grating cavity the spectral brightness has been improved over 18 times when compared to the free running operation. These schemes could be also extended for other wavelengths of interest in the future.

We describe the theoretical modeling of the external-cavity operation of a phase-locked array of diode lasers in two configurations, the self-imaging cavity based on the Talbot effect and the angular-filtering cavity. Complex filtering functions, such as the transmission or reflection of a volume Bragg grating (VBG), may be introduced in the external-cavity description. Experiments with high-brightness diode laser arrays were also conducted. The experimental results are carefully analyzed with regard to the numerical simulations, and the beneficial effect of the spectral selectivity of VBGs is demonstrated.