Antti Rantamäki

3 W of 650 nm red emission by frequency doubling of wafer-fused semiconductor disk laser

3 W at genuine red wavelength of 650 nm has been achieved from a semiconductor disk laser by frequency doubling. An InP based active medium was fused with a GaAs/AlGaAs distributed Bragg reflector resulting in an integrated monolithic gain mirror. 6.6 W of output power at the fundamental wavelength of 1.3 µm represents the best achievement reported to date for this type of lasers.

1.38-µm mode-locked Raman fiber laser pumped by semiconductor disk laser

A mode-locked Raman fiber laser pumped by 1.3 µm semiconductor disk laser is demonstrated. Direct Watt-level core-pumping of the single-mode fiber Raman lasers and amplifiers with low-noise disk lasers is demonstrated to represent a highly practical solution as compared with conventional scheme using pumping by Raman wavelength convertors. Raman laser employing passive mode-locking by nonlinear polarization evolution in normal dispersion regime produces stable pedestal-free 1.97 ps pulses at 1.38 µm. Using semiconductor disk lasers capable of producing high power with diffraction-limited beam allows Raman gain to be obtained at virtually any wavelength of interest owing to spectral versatility of semiconductor gain materials and wafer-fusing technology.

1 W at 785 nm from a frequency-doubled wafer-fused semiconductor disk laser

We demonstrate an optically pumped semiconductor disk laser operating at 1580 nm with 4.6 W of output power, which represents the highest output power reported from this type of laser. 1 W of output power at 785 nm with nearly diffraction-limited beam has been achieved from this laser through intracavity frequency doubling, which offers an attractive alternative to Ti:sapphire lasers and laser diodes in a number of applications, e.g., in spectroscopy, atomic cooling and biophotonics.

Low Temperature Gold-to-Gold Bonded Semiconductor Disk Laser

We present a gold-to-gold bonding method that combines features of surface activated bonding and capillary bonding. The process is performed at a relatively low temperature of 150°C and therefore allows the integration of materials with highly mismatched coefficients of thermal expansion. In this letter, the potential of this technique is illustrated by assembling a high-power flip chip semiconductor disk laser utilizing a chemical vapor deposition diamond heat spreader. The laser produces up to 14 W of output power at 15°C gain element temperature with a nearly diffraction-limited output beam. Further scaling of bonding area to wafer-level could make this method useful in the packaging of various optoelectronic and microelectronic components.

High-power flip-chip semiconductor disk laser in the 1.3 μm wavelength band

We present 6.1 W of output power from a flip-chip semiconductor disk laser (SDL) emitting in the 1.3 μm wavelength region. This is the first demonstration of a flip-chip SDL in this wavelength range with output powers that are comparable to those obtained with intracavity diamond heat spreaders. The flip-chip configuration circumvents the optical distortions and losses that the intracavity diamond heat spreaders can introduce into the laser cavity. This is essential for several key applications of SDLs.

High power semiconductor disk laser with a semiconductor-dielectric-metal compound mirror

We present optically pumped semiconductor disk lasers with a thin dielectric layer placed between the semiconductor distributed Bragg reflector and the metallization interface. The approach is shown to enhance the reflectivity of the semiconductor mirror while introducing a negligible penalty to the thermal resistance of the device. The design has potential for improving the performance of semiconductor disk lasers by avoiding highly pump-absorbing metal layers and allowing thinner mirror structures. The advantages are expected to be especially prominent for material systems that employ thick thermally insulating semiconductor mirrors.

Low-noise Raman fiber amplifier pumped by semiconductor disk laser

A 1.3 µm Raman fiber amplifier pumped by 1.22 µm semiconductor disk laser in co-propagation geometry is demonstrated. Measured relative intensity noise of -148 dB/Hz over frequency range up to 3.5 GHz was measured at 900 mW of pump power. 9 dB gain was achieved with co-propagating pumping geometry with less than 2 dB additional noise induced by amplifier to the signal. Nearly shot-noise-limited operation of semiconductor disk laser combined with the diffraction-limited beam allows for efficient core-pumping of the single-mode fiber Raman amplifiers and represents a highly practical approach which takes full advantage of co-propagating pumping.

1.56 µm 1 watt single frequency semiconductor disk laser

A single frequency wafer-fused semiconductor disk laser at 1.56 µm with 1 watt of output power and a coherence length over 5 km in fiber is demonstrated. The result represents the highest output power reported for a narrow-line semiconductor disk laser operating at this spectral range. The study shows the promising potential of the wafer fusion technique for power scaling of single frequency vertical-cavity lasers emitting in the 1.3-1.6 µm range.

Flip Chip Quantum-Dot Semiconductor Disk Laser at 1200 nm

In this letter, we present the first 2-W flip chip quantum-dot (QD) semiconductor disk laser operating at 1200 nm. Compared to other techniques used for thermal management, e.g., intracavity heat spreader approach, the flip chip design preserves undisturbed optical spectrum and exhibits low intracavity losses. The latter is particularly essential for power scaling of lasers with QD gain media.

High performance wafer-fused semiconductor disk lasers emitting in the 1300 nm waveband

We report for the first time on the performance of 1300 nm waveband semiconductor disc lasers (SDLs) with wafer fused gain mirrors that implement intracavity diamond and flip-chip heat dissipation schemes based on the same gain material. With a new type of gain mirror structure, maximum output power values reach 7.1 W with intracavity diamond gain mirrors and 5.6 W with flip-chip gain mirrors, using a pump spot diameter of 300 µm, exhibiting a beam quality factor M(2)< 1.25 in the full operation range. These results confirm previously published theoretical modeling of these types of SDLs.