High-Power Semiconductor Lasers for In-Situ Sensing of Atmospheric Gases
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Papers from the conference are presented, and the topics covered include the following: x-ray lasers, excimer lasers, chemical lasers, high power lasers, blue-green lasers, dye lasers, solid state lasers, semiconductor lasers, gas and discharge lasers, carbon dioxide lasers, ultrafast phenomena, nonlinear optics, quantum optics, dynamic gratings and wave mixing, laser radar, lasers in medicine, optical filters and laser communication, optical techniques and instruments, laser material interaction, and industrial and manufacturing applications.
Semiconductor injection laser for continuous operation at room temperature in visible wavelength range
An Ho:YLF crystal including Tm as sensitizers for the activator Ho, is optically pumped with a semiconductor diode laser array to generate 2.1 micron radiation with a pump power to output power of efficiency as high as 68 percent. The prior-art dual sensitizer system of Er and Tm requires cooling, such as by LN2, but by using Tm alone and decreasing the concentrations of Tm and Ho, and decreasing the length of the laser rod to about 1 cm, it has been demonstrated that laser operation can be obtained from a temperature of 77 K with an efficiency as high as 68 percent up to ambient room temperature with an efficiency at that temperature as high as 9 percent.
The problem of optimizing power conversion efficiency of semiconductor lasers and laser arrays and minimizing efficiency degradation due to temperature effects is treated. A method for calculating this efficiency is described and some calculated results are presented and discussed. Under some conditions, a small increase in the thermal resistance of the device can result in a large reduction of its efficiency. Temperature effects are important in high-power semiconductor laser, and in particular in laser arrays, where low thermal resistance heat sinking may be crucial to the device operation.
Uniform semiconductor laser arrays tend to oscillate in a superposition of their supermodes, thus leading to large beam divergence and spectral spread. Discrimination among the supermodes in phase-locked arrays is discussed theoretically. It is shown that supermode discrimination in gain-guided arrays, in favor of the fundamental supermode, is made possible by the near-field interference patterns which result from the complex optical fields of the gain-guided lasers. A fundamental supermode operation is demonstrated, for the first time, in GaAlAs/GaAs gain-guided laser arrays. This is achieved by control of the current (gain) profile across the array by means of individual laser contacts.
Semiconductor-laser arrays more reliable, more powerful, and easier to make. Improved design intended to eliminate undesired electromagnetic modes and mode shifts sometimes occuring in gain-guided variety. Reflected from mirror/window at end of common resonator section of laser, energy refracted from each laser enters adjacent laser. Mutual coupling establishes phase relationships among lasers. Monolithic laser array made by standard epitaxial techniques. Made in part with polymeric materials to mitigate some deleterious effects of all-expitaxial processing. Potential applications include optical communications, ranging, printing, and recording.
Proposed semiconductor laser emits radiation perpendicularly to its broad surface by use of annular Bragg grating as output coupler. Produces narrow output beam. Advantages include lower threshold current, smaller size, and increased efficiency.
An optically pumped semiconductor disk laser based on a heterostructure containing ten CdS/ZnSe coupled quantum wells with type-II band offsets is studied. The structure was grown by metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy (MOVPE) on a GaAs substrate. The peak power of the semiconductor disk laser achieved at room temperature under longitudinal pumping by a repetitively pulsed N{sub 2} laser was 0.75 W at a wavelength of 496.5 nm, a pulse duration of 3 ns, and a pulse repetition rate of 100 Hz. The slope efficiency of the disk laser was 2.7 %. The total divergence angle at a cavity length of 1.1 mm varied from 5 mrad near the lasing threshold to 15 mrad at the maximum pump power. (lasers)
The development of mid-IR III-V semiconductor diode lasers is briefly reviewed. Particularly, the recent progress and current status of Sb-based type-II interband cascade lasers are presented.
We report on the development and demonstration of a compact 2-micron semiconductor seed laser for CO2 lidar instruments. Our monolithic high-power fiber-pigtailed semiconductor seed laser will greatly enhance the operability and applicability of IPDA (Integrated Path Differential Absorption) lidar systems for high spatial and temporal resolution CO2 airborne measurements as well as future Earth-orbiting CO2 measurement missions. The compact semiconductor transmitter has a suitably narrow linewidth (less than 100 kilohertz) and enables flexible tuning (greater than 150 gigahertz) over several CO2 absorption lines in the 2.05-micron band.The frequency agility and multi-format modulation capability of the proposed technology, its small size and compatibility with standard DFB (Distributed FeedBack) lasers at the telecom band paves the way for adoption of the attractive 2.05-micron band for CO2 profiling and measurements.
Arrays of phase-locked semiconductor injection lasers integrated monolithically on the same substrate are one potential method for obtaining higher power levels (in controlled mode operation) than those available from a single laser. This paper describes basic methods for analyzing the electrical and optical characteristics of these devices, and discusses problems associated with maintaining a stable operation in a single array mode ('supermode'). Various experimental results are presented and compared with theory.
The main objective of the Joint-Research Interchange NCC2-5149 was to develop computer codes for accurate simulation of femtosecond pulse propagation in semiconductor lasers and semiconductor amplifiers [I]. The code should take into account all relevant processes such as the interband and intraband carrier relaxation mechanisms and the many-body effects arising from the Coulomb interaction among charge carriers [2]. This objective was fully accomplished. We made use of a previously developed algorithm developed at NASA Ames [3]-[5]. The new algorithm was tested on several problems of practical importance. One such problem was related to the amplification of femtosecond optical pulses in semiconductors. These results were presented in several international conferences over a period of three years. With the help of a postdoctoral fellow, we also investigated the origin of instabilities that can lead to the formation of femtosecond pulses in different kinds of lasers. We analyzed the occurrence of absolute instabilities in lasers that contain a dispersive host material with third-order nonlinearities. Starting from the Maxwell-Bloch equations, we derived general multimode equations to distinguish between convective and absolute instabilities. We find that both self-phase modulation and intensity-dependent absorption can dramatically affect the absolute stability of such lasers. In particular, the self-pulsing threshold (the so-called second laser threshold) can occur at few times the first laser threshold even in good-cavity lasers for which no self-pulsing occurs in the absence of intensity-dependent absorption. These results were presented in an international conference and published in the form of two papers.