Oliver D. Sieber

High-power MIXSEL: an integrated ultrafast semiconductor laser with 6.4 W average power

High-power ultrafast lasers are important for numerous industrial and scientific applications. Current multi-watt systems, however, are based on relatively complex laser concepts, for example using additional intracavity elements for pulse formation. Moving towards a higher level of integration would reduce complexity, packaging, and manufacturing cost, which are important requirements for mass production. Semiconductor lasers are well established for such applications, and optically-pumped vertical external cavity surface emitting lasers (VECSELs) are most promising for higher power applications, generating the highest power in fundamental transverse mode (>20 W) to date. Ultrashort pulses have been demonstrated using passive modelocking with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM), achieving for example 2.1-W average power, sub-100-fs pulse duration, and 50-GHz pulse repetition rate. Previously the integration of both the gain and absorber elements into a single wafer was demonstrated with the MIXSEL (modelocked integrated external-cavity surface emitting laser) but with limited average output power (<200 mW). We have demonstrated the power scaling concept of the MIXSEL using optimized quantum dot saturable absorbers in an antiresonant structure design combined with an improved thermal management by wafer removal and mounting of the 8-µm thick MIXSEL structure directly onto a CVD-diamond heat spreader. The simple straight cavity with only two components has generated 28-ps pulses at 2.5-GHz repetition rate and an average output power of 6.4 W, which is higher than for any other modelocked semiconductor laser.

Femtosecond high-power quantum dot vertical external cavity surface emitting laser

We report on the first femtosecond vertical external cavity surface emitting laser (VECSEL) exceeding 1 W of average output power. The VECSEL is optically pumped, based on self-assembled InAs quantum dot (QD) gain layers, cooled efficiently using a thin disk geometry and passively modelocked with a fast quantum dot semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). We developed a novel gain structure with a flat group delay dispersion (GDD) of ± 10 fs2 over a range of 30 nm around the designed operation wavelength of 960 nm. This amount of GDD is several orders of magnitude lower compared to standard designs. Furthermore, we used an optimized positioning scheme of 63 QD gain layers to broaden and flatten the spectral gain. For stable and self-starting pulse formation, we have employed a QD-SESAM with a fast absorption recovery time of around 500 fs. We have achieved 1 W of average output power with 784-fs pulse duration at a repetition rate of 5.4 GHz. The QD-SESAM and the QD-VECSEL are operated with similar cavity mode areas, which is beneficial for higher repetition rates and the integration of both elements into a modelocked integrated external-cavity surface emitting laser (MIXSEL).

Experimental verification of soliton-like pulse-shaping mechanisms in passively mode-locked VECSELs.

During the less than ten years since the first demonstration of modelocked vertical external cavity surface emitting lasers (VECSELs), their performance strongly improved and starts to become comparable to standard modelocked lasers based on ion-doped glasses or crystals. Moreover, the semiconductor gain material has important advantages such as cost-efficient mass-production, emission wavelength and bandwidth control by bandgap engineering. Picosecond pulses with average output powers ≫2 W were achieved and the repetition rate was increased up to 50 GHz [1]. Pulse durations as short as 260 fs were obtained, but only at low power levels of 15 mW [2]. Despite this impressive progress, so far, femtosecond operation could not be combined with high power levels. Previously, the most relevant parameters for the temporal pulse shaping were identified and a qualitative theory on a quasi-soliton pulse shaping mechanism was developed [3]. Here we demonstrate for the first time the detailed experimental verification of this quasi-soliton pulse formation theory. We show that the achievable pulse duration strongly depends on the group delay dispersion (GDD), and that it is important to provide positive overall GDD for achieving short pulse durations.

VECSEL gain characterization.

We present the first full gain characterization of two vertical external cavity surface emitting laser (VECSEL) gain chips with similar designs operating in the 960-nm wavelength regime. We optically pump the structures with continuous-wave (cw) 808-nm radiation and measure the nonlinear reflectivity for 130-fs and 1.4-ps probe pulses as function of probe pulse fluence, pump power, and heat sink temperature. With this technique we are able to measure the saturation behavior for VECSEL gain chips for the first time. The characterization with 1.4-ps pulses resulted in saturation fluences of 40-80 μJ/cm2, while probing with 130-fs pulses yields reduced saturation fluences of 30-50 μJ/cm2 for both structures. For both pulse durations this is lower than previously assumed. A small-signal gain of up to 5% is obtained with this technique. Furthermore, in a second measurement setup, we characterize the spectral dependence of the gain using a tunable cw probe beam. We measure a gain bandwidth of over 26 nm for both structures, full width at half maximum.

Femtosecond VECSEL with tunable multi-gigahertz repetition rate.

We present a femtosecond vertical external cavity surface emitting laser (VECSEL) that is continuously tunable in repetition rate from 6.5 GHz up to 11.3 GHz. The use of a low-saturation fluence semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) enables stable cw modelocking with a simple cavity design, for which the laser mode area on SESAM and VECSEL are similar and do not significantly change for a variation in cavity length. Without any realignment of the cavity for the full tuning range, the pulse duration remained nearly constant around 625 fs with less than 3.5% standard deviation. The center wavelength only changed ±0.2 nm around 963.8 nm, while the output power was 169 mW with less than 6% standard deviation. Such a tunable repetition rate is interesting for various metrology applications such as optical sampling by laser cavity tuning (OSCAT).

Low repetition rate SESAM modelocked VECSEL using an extendable active multipass-cavity approach

Ultrafast VECSELs are compact pulsed laser sources with more flexibility in the emission wavelength compared to diode-pumped solid-state lasers. Typically, the reduction of the pulse repetition rate is a straightforward method to increase both pulse energy and peak power. However, the relatively short carrier lifetime of semiconductor gain materials of a few nanoseconds sets a lower limit to the repetition rate of passively modelocked VECSELs. This fast gain recovery combined with low pulse repetition rates leads to the buildup of multiple pulses in the cavity. Therefore, we applied an active multipass approach with which demonstrate fundamental modelocking at a repetition rate of 253 MHz with 400 mW average output power in 11.3 ps pulses.

Sub-100 MHz passively modelocked VECSEL

We demonstrate a record-low pulse repetition rate of 99.6 MHz from a passively modelocked VECSEL employing a conventional cavity. Fundamental modelocking was verified with an average output power of 30 mW in 20 ps pulses.

First MIXSEL with a quantum well saturable absorber: Shorter pulse durations and higher repetition rates

We present the first Modelocked Integrated eXternal-Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (MIXSEL) based on a quantum well absorber, achieving 4.8-ps pulses at a repetition rate of 2.9 GHz and 6.8-ps pulses at 20.8 GHz.

Wavelength tunable graphene modelocked VECSEL

We passively modelock an optically pumped VECSEL by using a single-layer graphene saturable absorber mirror, resulting in pulses as short as 473 fs. A broad wavelength tuning range of 46 nm is achieved with three different VECSEL chips, with a single chip 21 nm are covered.

All Quantum-Dot Based Femtosecond VECSEL

Using quantum well gain materials, ultrafast VECSELs have achieved higher output powers (2.1 W) and shorter pulses (60 fs) than any other semiconductor laser. Quantum dot (QD) gain materials offer a larger inhomogeneously broadened bandwidth, potentially supporting shorter pulse durations. We demonstrate the first femtosecond QD-based VECSEL using a QD-SESAM for modelocking, obtaining 63 mW at 3.2 GHz in 780-fs pulses at 960 nm. In continuous wave operation we obtained 5.2 W using an intra-cavity diamond heat spreader, which has been the highest output power from a QD-VECSEL so far. Further power scaling is thus expected also for modelocked operation.