Design and characteristics of high-power (<0.5-W CW) diode-pumped vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting semiconductor lasers with circular TEM/sub 00/ beams

TLDR

The authors aim to design, fabricate, and characterize high‑power optically pumped‑semiconductor VCSELs. They use a vertical‑external‑cavity surface‑emitting laser architecture pumped by a diode laser. The OPS‑VCSELs deliver watt‑level output, producing 0.69 W in TEM11, 0.52 W in TEM00, and 0.37 W coupled to a single‑mode fiber at ~1004 nm, and the design scales to multi‑watt levels, providing compact, efficient, diffraction‑limited sources for fiber or single‑mode applications.

Abstract

We describe the design, fabrication, and measured characteristics of the high-power optically pumped-semiconductor (OPS) vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). Using diode laser pumping, we have recently demonstrated operation of such lasers, which for the first time generate high (watt-level) power and a circular Gaussian beam directly from a semiconductor laser. These OPS-VECSELs have a strain-compensated multi-quantum-well InGaAs-GaAsP-GaAs structure and operate CW near /spl lambda//spl sim/1004 nm with output power of 0.69 W in TEM/sub 11/ mode, 0.52 W in TEM/sub 00/ mode and 0.37 W coupled to a single-mode fiber. With multiple pump and gain elements, OPS-VCSEL technology is scalable to the multiwatt power levels. Such lasers will prove useful in a variety of applications requiring compact and efficient sources with high-power output in a single-mode fiber or with diffraction-limited beam quality.