Abstract
Semiconductor disk lasers (SDLs), also known by the alternative name of vertical external cavity surface emitting lasers (VECSELs), have become established in recent years as an attractive new variant in continuous-wave (CW) or quasi-CW "solid state" laser technology [1-3]. These devices, consisting of a "half-VCSEL" semiconductor gain chip in an external optical cavity, take full advantage of band-gap engineering across the range of III-V semiconductor materials systems, thus offering great versatility and flexibility. Although SDL's can, in some circumstances, have integrated direct or indirect electrical pumping, the majority of advances have come from utilising relayed optical (usually laser diode) pumping, hence their further alternative name of optically-pumped semiconductor lasers (OPSLs). This simplifies the gain chip design, more directly facilitates mode-matching of the emission from the gain chip into the external optical resonator (usually configured using bulk optics) and promotes the full flexibility of the technology for wavelength coverage, wavelength tuning and power scaling.
© 2009 IEEE
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