High-power optically pumped semiconductor lasers

On the design of electrically pumped vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers

“…It will be shown that a trade off between the conflicting optical and electrical optimization has to be found and we derive an optimized design resulting in guidelines for the design of EP-VECSELs which are compatible with passive mode locking. Vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) [1] are of high scientific and industrial interest due to their large fundamental transverse mode output power, scaling with the device radius, the near diffraction limited output beam, and the suitability for intracavity frequency conversion [2] and passive mode locking [3,4]. Passive mode locking of an optically pumped VECSEL has been demonstrated with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) [5] in a folded external cavity.…”

Semiconductor disk lasers for the generation of visible and ultraviolet radiation

“…This means that for emitters in the range 900-1300 nm, where materials offer low thermal resistance, thin-device-cooled SDLs should ultimately reach higher powers than heatspreader-bonded devices, a trend yet to be confirmed experimentally. A survey of all the results published to-date establishes the current maximum power emitted by heatspreader-bonded SDLs to be greater than 12 W (∼ 0.2 mm cavity diameter, single transverse mode) [88] and greater than 30 W (∼ 0.9 mm cavity diameter, multimode) for thin-device SDLs [47]. The thermal limitation to power-scaling is illustrated in Fig.…”

“…Up-to 5 mW of blue light was obtained for 300 mW of 808 nm pump power. Since then, using the high-performance 920-980 nm SDLs described in paragraphs 4.1.1 and 4.1.2, lithium triborate (LBO) as the frequency-doubling crystal and 4-mirror cavities, emission with an output power of 7 W at 460 nm and 15 W at 488 nm has been achieved for 30 and 55 W of 808 nm pump power, respectively [47,107].…”

“…6. The first, so called "thin-device" technique, consists of transferring the thin (∼ 6 μm-thick) epitaxially-grown semiconductor gain mirror structure onto a heatsink [46][47][48]. In practice, the semiconductor growth starts with an etch-stop cap, followed by the active section and finishes with the mirror.…”

Scintillation index for two Gaussian laser beams with different wavelengths in weak atmospheric turbulence

“…These devices have the advantage of generating high power, high brightness wavelength tunable TEM 00 beams (lowest order Gaussian beams) [20]. Individual VECSEL devices have been demonstrated with powers of 50 Watts running multi-mode [21] and up to 10 Watts, single TEM 00 mode and spectrally narrow (<0.1nm line width) [22]. Moreover, the semiconductor multiple quantum well active mirror of these devices should allow for multi-GHz modulation rates for data transmission.…”