Search

Carrier-induced anti-guiding effects emerging at extremely high injection current densities under short-pulse operation necessitate lateral-waveguide design considerations, that differ from those required when continuous-wave operation is desired. Here, we investigate variations of the lateral index-guiding trench design to achieve an excellent brightness value of 27.4 Wmm−1mrad−1 from tapered-ridge-waveguide lasers with more than 18 W output power under 3.3 ns long pulse operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diode lasers generating optical pulses with high peak power and lengths in the nanosecond range are key components for light detection and ranging systems, e.g. for autonomous driving and object detection. We present here an internally wavelength stabilized distributed Bragg reflector broad area laser bar with 48 emitters. The vertical structure based on AlGaAs (confinement and cladding layers) and InGaAs (active quantum well) is specifically optimized for wavelength-stabilized pulsed operation, applying a surface Bragg grating with high reflectivity. The bar is electrically driven by a new in-house developed high-speed driver based on GaN transistors providing current pulses with amplitudes of up to 1000 A and a repetition frequency of 10 kHz. The generated 4 ns to 10 ns long optical pulses are nearly rectangular shaped and reach a pulse peak power in excess of 600 Watts at 25 °C. The optical spectrum with a centre wavelength of about 900 nm has a width of 0.15 nm (FWHM) with a side mode suppression ratio > 30 dB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a physically realistic and yet numerically applicable thermal model to account for short- and long-term self-heating within broad-area lasers. Although the temperature increase is small under pulsed operation, a waveguide that is formed within a few-nanosecond-long pulse can result in a transition from a gain-guided to an index-guided structure, leading to near and far field narrowing. Under continuous wave operation, the longitudinally varying temperature profile is obtained self-consistently. The resulting unfavorable narrowing of the near field can be successfully counteracted by etching trenches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We experimentally study the pulse generation and the pulse train timing and amplitude stability of a monolithic passively mode-locked multisection quantum-well semiconductor laser. The laser emits a stable optical pulse train at a wavelength of 1070 nm and at a fundamental repetition rate of 20 GHz. Timing jitter and amplitude jitter analysis allows identifying distinct laser operating regimes of stable picosecond optical pulses. We obtain an ultra-low pulse-to-pulse timing jitter of 22 fs and find emission regimes which are unaffected by amplitude jitter. The lowest pulse width amounts to 2.6 ps, and the highest pulse peak power is estimated to be 556 mW at a low timing jitter of 170 fs and a negligible relative amplitude jitter of 0.05. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For automotive light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems diode lasers emitting short optical pulses with a good beam quality and a low wavelength shift over a wide operating temperature range is needed. In this paper, theoretical and experimental results of broad area laser diodes specially designed for this application are presented. Optical pulse powers of tens of watts and pulse lengths in the 10 ns‐range for wavelengths near 905 nm and environmental temperatures between 15 and 85 °C are achieved. Due to the integrated Bragg grating the wavelength shift with temperature is as low as 65 pm K−1. The contact mesa with a width of 50 μm leads to a lateral M2 value of about 9. Streak camera measurements of the temporal evolution of the lateral near field intensity reveal that the highest intensity is emitted near the mesa edges. Simulation results of power current characteristics indicate that the power saturation experimentally observed can be attributed to nonlinear effects such as two‐photon‐absorption and gain compression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generation and detection of radiation in the THz frequency range can be achieved with many different electronic and photonic concepts. Among the many different photonic THz systems the most versatile are based on diode lasers. In this paper we describe and review the different concepts and optimization ideas for diode laser based THz systems in order to achieve the best performance for different types of THz setups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dual-wavelength master oscillator (MO) power amplifier (PA) diode-laser system emitting at 785 nm suitable for shifted excitation Raman difference spectroscopy is presented. The laser system consists of a distributed Bragg reflector V-branch diode laser as a dual-wavelength MO and a ridge waveguide PA. The system reaches an optical output power of more than 750 mW at 25 °C. Optical spectra show wavelength stabilized single mode emission at 784.60 and 785.22 nm over the whole power range with a spectral width ≤10 pm (≤0.5 cm-1) and a spectral distance of 0.62 nm (≤10.1 cm -1). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A master oscillator power amplifier system for the generation of ns-pulses with high peak power, stabilized wavelength and narrow spectral line width will be presented. The master oscillator is a distributed feedback (DFB) ridge waveguide (RW) laser. The tapered amplifier consists of three RW sections and one flared gain-guided section. The DFB laser is operated in continuous wave mode and emits at 1064 nm with a spectral line width below 10 pm. One RW section of the amplifier acts as an optical gate for pulse selection. The tapered section amplifies the generated optical pulse. By adjusting the delay time between the current pulses injected into the picker and into the tapered section, respectively, the power of the amplified spontaneous emission was reduced below 1% of the average laser power. For an optical pulse length of 2 ns, a peak power of 16 W was obtained. A side mode suppression ratio better than 46 dB was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The amplification of ps and fs pulses with peak powers of up to 4.5kW has been investigated in a single quantum well InGaAs tapered amplifier. The pulses with durations of 100fs or 2ps were generated by a modelocked titanium–sapphire laser. The amplified pulses indicate strong gain saturation and carrier generation due to photon absorption in the laser active region which causes a temporal broadening of the amplified pulses as well as modifications of the optical spectrum. The gain recovery time was measured by a pump–probe experiment. The experimental results are analyzed with respect to the sub-ps gain dynamics which is described by a relaxation time approximation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this Letter, we investigate the resolution of two-photon polymerization (2PP) with an amplified mode-locked external cavity diode laser with adjustable pulse length and a high repetition rate. The experimental results are analyzed with a newly developed 2PP model. Even with low pulse peak intensity, the produced structural dimensions are comparable to those generated by traditional 2PP laser sources. Thus, we show that a compact monolithic picosecond laser diode without amplification and with a repetition rate in the GHz regime can also be applied for 2PP. These results show the high application potential of compact mode-locked diode lasers for low-cost and compact 2PP systems.

We present a femtosecond laser diode system that is capable of autonomously adjusting itself to compensate for the external dispersion in an arbitrary application. The laser system contains a spatial light modulator inside the cavity which is controlled by an evolutionary algorithm in order to allow for phase and amplitude shaping of the laser emission. The cavity-internal dispersion control is shown to be much more efficient than an external control with a pulse shaper.

A self-optimizing approach to intra-cavity spectral shaping of external cavity mode-locked semiconductor lasers using edge-emitting multi-section diodes is presented. An evolutionary algorithm generates spectrally resolved phase- and amplitude masks that lead to the utilization of a large part of the net gain spectrum for mode-locked operation. Using these masks as a spectral amplitude and phase filter, a bandwidth of the optical intensity spectrum of 3.7 THz is achieved and Fourier-limited pulses of 216 fs duration are generated after further external compression.

We analyze the influence of second and third order intracavity dispersion on a passively mode-locked diode laser by introducing a spatial light modulator (SLM) into the external cavity. The dispersion is optimized for chirped pulses with highest possible spectral bandwidth that can be externally compressed to the sub picosecond range. We demonstrate that the highest spectral bandwidth is achieved for a combination of second and third order dispersion. With subsequent external compression pulses with a duration of 437 fs are generated.

We report on the generation of ultrashort pulses by dispersion management of a passively modelocked external cavity diode laser. Pulse widths down to 200 fs are obtained at 830 nm emission wavelength. We use intracavity dispersion management to increase the spectral bandwidth and compress the strongly chirped pulses externally with a grating compressor.

Almost chirp-free pulses with a duration of 190 fs were achieved from a mode-locked semiconductor disk laser (SDL) emitting at approximately 1045 nm. Pulse shaping was different from the soliton-like mode-locking process known from lasers using dielectric gain media; passive amplitude modulation provided by a fast saturable absorber was essential. The spectrum of the absorber had to be matched to the gain spectrum within a few nm. A tapered diode amplifier was demonstrated to be a device for both picking and amplifying SDL pulses. The pulse repetition rate of the SDL output was reduced from 3 GHz to 47 MHz.

Passive mode-locked laser operation based on an Yb-doped lanthanum scandium borate crystal is demonstrated. Pulse durations as short as 58 fs and 67 fs were achieved applying a Ti:sapphire- and a diode-laser pump source, respectively. The average output powers were 73 mW and 39 mW at a repetition rate of 90 MHz. The laser was broadly tunable from 1028 to 1057 nm in the sub-200 fs pulse regime.