Various waveguide lasers in rare-earth-doped LiNbO3 have been studied, and an Yb:LiNbO3 annealed/proton-exchanged (APE) waveguide laser pumped at a 918 nm wavelength has been reported recently. In this paper, an Yb:LiNbO3 APE waveguide laser pumped at a 980 nm wavelength is proposed and demonstrated. Pumping at 980 nm allows the use of a commercially available InGaAs laser diode for a pump source instead of a Ti:Al2O3 laser used in the previous work. The longer pump wavelength is favorable to avoid photorefractive damage. A prototype device was designed, fabricated and tested. Laser oscillation was achieved at 1061 nm wavelength with a threshold pump power of 30 mW. An output power of 4.3 mW was obtained, which was three-orders of magnitude larger than that obtained in the previous work.
SUMMARYFor realization of new functionalities and exploration of application areas for LiNbO 3 optical waveguide devices, rare earth element doped LiNbO 3 waveguide lasers have been studied. The authors have proposed a waveguide laser using ytterbium (Yb) as the rare earth element and an annealed/proton-exchanged waveguide as the optical waveguide. In the present research, various characteristics of the Yb:LiNbO 3 needed for design and fabrication of the devices were measured. A waveguide laser was designed and fabricated and CW laser oscillation was accomplished with an Yb:LiNbO 3 waveguide laser.
Yb-indiffused LiNbO 3 annealed/proton -exchanged waveguide lasers were designed and fabricated. Laser oscillation took place at 1061nm with a threshold power of 57mW. The obtained output power was 300-times as high as that of previous work.
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