Development of high-brightness diode lasers: the z-laser

Konstantin Boucke; Joseph Rogg; Reinhart Poprawe

doi:10.1117/12.497968

3 March 2003 Development of high-brightness diode lasers: the z-laser

Konstantin Boucke, Joseph Rogg, Reinhart Poprawe

Proceedings Volume 4831, First International Symposium on High-Power Laser Macroprocessing; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.497968
Event: LAMP 2002: International Congress on Laser Advanced Materials Processing, 2002, Osaka, Japan

Abstract

During the recent years the performance of high power diode lasers in terms of output power and lifetime has increased significantly. However, for many applications not only a high output power but also a good beam quality is necessary -- in other terms, high brightness is required. While the beam quality of classical broad area-type high power diode lasers is poor, special laser structures have been developed to achieve an improved beam quality. Examples are the tapered laser, the alpha-DFB-laser and -- the latest development -- the so-called "z-laser." The z-laser uses internal total reflection for the suppression of higher-order modes. The effectiveness of this working principle was first demonstrated by performing extensive numerical simulations. During the last year the first z-laser structures have been processed and characterized. The experimental results of these first test lasers are compared with the predictions from the numerical simulations and show a very good agreement. With these first lasers, approximately 500 mW output power at 6-times diffraction limited beam quality have been demonstrated. Nevertheless, there are also some not well understood features of the z-laser to be investigated, like a reduced conversion efficiency and untypical characteristic curves showing kinks. Understanding these features, demonstrating the reproducibility of the structure and further performance improvements are the goals of current rsearch.

Citation Download Citation

Konstantin Boucke, Joseph Rogg, and Reinhart Poprawe "Development of high-brightness diode lasers: the z-laser", Proc. SPIE 4831, First International Symposium on High-Power Laser Macroprocessing, (3 March 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.497968

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