High-Power Optically Pumped Semiconductor Lasers for Near Infrared Wavelengths

Abstract

Optically pumped semiconductor lasers (OPSLs) combine features including an engineerable emission wavelength, good beam quality, and scalable output power and are desirable for a wide variety of applications. Power scaling of OPSLs requires a combination of accurate epitaxial quantum design, accurate wafer growth and good thermal management. Here a fabrication process for OPSL devices was developed to ensure efficient OPSL device cooling and minimum surface scattering. A systematic thermal analysis was performed to optimize thermal management. Strategies for optimizing power extraction were developed; including increasing the gain/micro-cavity detuning that increases the threshold but also increases the slope efficiency and the roll-over temperature, recycling the excess pump via reflection from a metalized reflector at the back of a transparent DBR, anti-reflection coating at the pump wavelength while preserving the signal micro-cavity resonance. With optimized thermal management and the strategy of using large gain/micro-cavity detuning structure, a CW output power of 103 W from a single OPSL device was achieved. 42% optical-to-optical efficiency from the net pump power was obtained from the OPSL device with the double pass pump design and 39% optical-to-optical efficiency with respect to the total pump power was obtained with the new pump anti-reflection coating. For the fundamental mode operation, over 27 W of CW output power was achieved. To our knowledge, this is the highest 1 µm TEM₀₀ mode power reported to date for an OPSL. Finally, strategies for generating high peak power are also discussed. A maximum peak power of over 270 W was achieved using 750 ns pump pulses.