High power semiconductor laser with phase-matching optical element

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9166368-B2
Application number	US-201213624537-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 21, 2012
Priority date	Oct 11, 2011
Publication date	Oct 20, 2015
Grant date	Oct 20, 2015

Abstract

A semiconductor laser that includes a single mode semiconductor laser coupled to a flared power amplifier is provided, the device including an internal or an external optical element that reinforces the curved wave front of the flared section of the device through phase-matching. By reinforcing the curved wave front via phase-matching, the device is less susceptible to thermal and gain-index coupled perturbations, even at high output powers, resulting in higher beam quality. Exemplary phase-matching optical elements include a grating integrated into the flared amplifier section; an intra-cavity, externally positioned binary optical element; and an intra-cavity, externally positioned cylindrically curved optical element.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A semiconductor laser, comprising:
a single mode (SM) semiconductor laser section;
a flared power amplifier section, wherein an SM output from said SM semiconductor laser section is injected into said flared power amplifier section, and wherein an output beam from said flared power amplifier section is comprised of a curved wave front; and
a curved grating integrated throughout said flared power amplifier section and configured to reinforce said curved w…

Assignees

• Kanskar Manoj
• Nlight Photonics Corp

Inventors

• Kanskar Manoj

Classifications

• H01S5/12

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H01S5/1085

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H01S5/22

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H01S5/0287

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H01S2301/166

  Electricity · mapped topic