Diode-pumped neodymium lasers

Abstract

Since the invention of diode lasers in the early 1960's there had been continuous investigations in laser diode pumped solid state lasers as has been reviewed in detail by a number of papers ( see e.g. [1] ). There are two main advantages of using diode lasers instead of flashlaraps as a pump source for solid state lasers: First the emission of the diode lasers matches well with the absorption bands of several Rare Earth ions that are doped in laser crystals ( mainly Nd3+, but also Er3, Tm3, Dy3', and others ) . This summary will report only about diode lasers at a wavelength of around BlOnm, which fits to an absorptionband of Nd3t Second diode lasers provide the possibility of longitudinally pumped configurations and therefore an excellent mode matching with the solid state laser mode. For both reasons the efficiency of a diode laser puniped solid state laser is nuch higher than of a flashlamp pumped one.Since the early 1980's a much wider interest in diode laser pumped solid state lasers arose. It was stimulated by the improved performance of the new generation of diode lasers in terms of reliability , operational lifetime and output power [21.Two important steps in direction to the diode lasers at present time were the developments of double hetero (DH) structure-and graded index separate confinement hetero (GrInSCH) structurediode lasers. In the same way the development of new production techniques were necessary to ensure the reliability of the diode lasers. Starting with the liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) the (GaAl)As structures are now grown by the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), mainly used for very high precision laboratory investigations, and metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD), mainly used for commercial production.As a first commercial product SDL introduced a 100mW array in 1984. Since then the output power of the commercially available diode lasers increased by two orders of magnitude to lOW. These diode lasers are multi stripe bar arrays like the 5W diode laser 48 / SPIE Vol. 1277 High-Power Solid State Lasers and Applications (1990) Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 06/15/2016 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx