Abstract
Semiconductor flared amplifiers now routinely emit ~1 watt of light in a diffraction-limited, single-frequency beam when driven at currents of a few amps.1 However, if driven at higher currents, the output beam breaks into filaments that spread light into higher-order modes.2 Here we present a simple method for extracting a diffraction-limited beam from the highly-filamented output of a semiconductor amplifier. With this method we can now operate the amplifiers at currents 3-4 times their diffraction-limited range and still obtain a diffraction-limited beam. By combining the outputs of multiple amplifiers, this method should produce very high power diffraction-limited beams from semiconductor lasers.
© 1996 Optical Society of America
PDF ArticleMore Like This
Y. Ding, P. Pogany, M. Spenger, H. J. Eichler, S. Diaz, R. Ludwig, and H. G. Weber
CTuI2 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 1996
J.M. Verdiell, H. Rajbenbach, and J.P. Huignard
CPD27 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 1990
Ching-Fuh Lin and Jie-Wei Lai
CThI29 The European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO/Europe) 1996