Roman Bek

Mode-locked red-emitting semiconductor disk laser with sub-250 fs pulses

We report on passive mode locking of a semiconductor disk laser emitting pulses shorter than 250 fs at 664 nm with a repetition frequency of 836 MHz. A fast saturable absorber mirror fabricated by metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy in a near-resonant design was used to enable the mode locking operation. It includes two GaInP quantum wells located close to the surface and an additional fused silica coating. The emission spectrum shows the superposition of a soliton-like part and a smaller “continuum” part.

High-power InP quantum dot based semiconductor disk laser exceeding 1.3 W

We demonstrate an optically pumped semiconductor disk laser (OP-SDL) using InP quantum dots (QDs) as active material fabricated by metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy. The QDs are grown within [(Al0.1Ga0.9)0.52In0.48]0.5P0.5 (abbr. Al0.1GaInP) barriers in order to achieve an emission wavelength around 655 nm. We present optical investigations of the active region showing typical QD behavior like blue shift with increasing excitation power and single emission lines, which show anti-bunching in an intensity auto-correlation measurement. We report maximum output powers of the OP-SDL of 1.39 W at low emission wavelength of ∼654 nm with a slope efficiency of ηdiff=25.4 %.

High optical output power in the UVA range of a frequency-doubled, strain-compensated AlGaInP-VECSEL

We present a maximum continuous-wave optical output power of 260 mW from an optically pumped, frequency-doubled vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser with wavelengths ranging from 325 to 332 nm. The device consists of a GaInP/AlGaInP multi-quantum-well structure grown using metal–organic vapour-phase epitaxy. We use strain compensation in the active region of the laser chip to for better performance at short wavelengths. In addition to wavelength-tuning results in the UVA region, power transfer measurements of the fundamental mode exceeding 1.2 W are presented.

Semiconductor membrane external-cavity surface-emitting laser (MECSEL)

Optically pumped semiconductor disk lasers are an important class of solid state lasers. Despite all their advantages, however, they suffer from heat incorporation into the active region caused by the excess energy of the pump photons. To overcome the limits of common methods in thermal management, we realized a semiconductor membrane external-cavity surface-emitting laser (MECSEL) consisting of a diamond heat spreader sandwiched active region design without a monolithically integrated distributed Bragg reflector (DBR). This diamond-sandwich approach improves the heat dissipation out of the active region and makes generally low-heat conductive DBRs obsolete. In an AlGaInP-based system, we demonstrate 595 mW output power at a wavelength of 657 nm and heatsink temperature of 10°C. The MECSEL enables a variety of new material combinations for new laser wavelengths and further potential for power scaling.

All quantum dot mode-locked semiconductor disk laser emitting at 655 nm

We present a semiconductor disk laser mode-locked by a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) with emission in the red spectral range. Both the gain and the absorber structure are fabricated by metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy in an anti-resonant design using quantum dots as active material. A v-shaped cavity is used to tightly focus onto the SESAM, producing pulses with a duration of about 1 ps at a repetition rate of 852 MHz.

Intra-cavity frequency-doubled mode-locked semiconductor disk laser at 325 nm

We present a passively mode-locked semiconductor disk laser (SDL) emitting at 650nm with intra-cavity second harmonic generation to the ultraviolet (UV) spectral range. Both the gain and the absorber structure contain InP quantum dots (QDs) as active material. In a v-shaped cavity using the semiconductor samples as end mirrors, a beta barium borate (BBO) crystal is placed in front of the semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) for pulsed UV laser emission in one of the two outcoupled beams. Autocorrelation (AC) measurements at the fundamental wavelength reveal a FWHM pulse duration of 1.22ps. With a repetition frequency of 836MHz, the average output power is 10mW per beam for the red emission and 0.5mW at 325nm.

Gain chip design, power scaling and intra-cavity frequency doubling with LBO of optically pumped red-emitting AlGaInP-VECSELs

The wide range of applications in biophotonics, television or projectors, spectroscopy and lithography made the optically-pumped semiconductor (OPS) vertical external cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) an important category of power scalable lasers. The possibility of bandgap engineering, inserting frequency selective and converting elements into the open laser cavity and laser emission in the fundamental Gaussian mode leads to ongoing growth of the area of applications for tuneable laser sources. We present an AlGaInP-VECSEL system with a multi quantum well structure consisting of compressively strained GaInP quantum wells in an AlxGa1-xInP separate confinement heterostructure with an emission wavelength around 665 nm. The VECSEL chip with its n-λ cavity is pumped by a 532nm Nd:YAG laser under an angle to the normal incidence of 50°. In comparison, a gain chip design for high absorption values at pump wavelengths around 640nm with the use of quantum dot layers as active material is also presented. Frequency doubling is now realized with an antireflection coated lithium borate crystal, while a birefringent filter, placed inside the laser cavity under Brewsters angle, is used for frequency tuning. Further, power-scaling methods like in-well pumping as well as embedding the active region of a VECSEL between two transparent ic heaspreaders are under investigation.

Femtosecond mode-locked red AlGaInP-VECSEL

We present passive mode locking of a vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) in the red spectral range. The gain structure includes 20 compressively strained GaInP quantum wells (QWs), which are arranged in a resonant periodic gain design containing five packages of four quantum wells each. We use tensile strained AlGaInP barriers and cladding layers to compensate the strain introduced by the quantum wells. The semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) includes two of the same quantum wells as used in the gain structure, positioned close to the surface. The semiconductor structure is grown by MOVPE in a near-resonant design and coated with a fused silica layer for an overall anti-resonant design. For tight focussing of the laser mode onto the absorber, we use a v-shaped cavity with an overall length of 179mm. Autocorrelation measurements show a FWHM pulse duration below 250 fs with side pulses arising due to the diamond heatspreader bonded onto the gain chip. The laser spectrum consists of a soliton-like part at 664.5 nm and a “continuum” which is also found in autocorrelation measurements perfomed in a Hanbury-Brown and Twiss type setup. An FFT based frequency analysis of the emitted pulse train shows a repetition rate of 836MHz. The SESAM charge carrier dynamics were investigated by pump-probe measurements. We observe a tri-exponential decay with a dominant fast decay time in the range of the pulse duration.

Efficiency and power scaling of in-well and multi-pass pumped AlGaInP VECSELs

We report a continuous wave operation of a quantum-well and multi-pass-pumped AlGaInP based red vertical-external cavity surface-emitting laser emitting at 660 nm. The laser output power was 1.5 W with a slope efficiency of 35 %. The critical role of optimizing the sample design both for the pump and laser wavelengths, pump spot size, and the number of pump light passes were experimentally investigated.

Quantum dot based mode-locked AlGaInP-VECSEL

We present passive mode locking of a vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) in the red spectral range with quantum dots (QDs) as active material in the gain and in the absorber structure. Both semiconductor samples are fabricated by metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy (MOVPE) in a near-anti-resonant design. A vshaped cavity is used to tightly focus onto the semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM), producing pulses with a duration of less than 1 ps and a repetition rate of 852MHz. In order to increase the field enhancement inside the absorber structure, some SESAM samples were additionally coated with a fused silica layer. The pulse duration as well as the mode locking stability were investigated for different thicknesses of the SiO2 layer. The most stable mode locking operation is observed for a 97 nm SiO2 layer, while the disadvantage of this overall near-resonant SESAM structure is an increased pulse duration of around 2 ps. Due to the improved stability, the transmission of the outcoupling mirror could be increased resulting in an average output power of 10mW at an emission wavelength of 651 nm.