A. Klehr, H. Wenzel, J. Fricke, F. Bugge, and G. Erbert

Published in:

Opt. Express, vol. 22, no 20, pp. 23980-23989 (2014).

Abstract:

We have developed a diode-laser based master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) light source which emits high-power spectrally stabilized and nearly-diffraction limited optical pulses in the nanoseconds range as required by many applications. The MOPA consists of a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) laser as master oscillator driven by a constant current and a ridge waveguide power amplifier (PA) which can be driven by a constant current (DC) or by rectangular current pulses with a width of 5 ns at a repetition frequency of 200 kHz. Under pulsed operation the amplifier acts as an optical gate, converting the CW input beam emitted by the DBR laser into a train of short amplified optical pulses. With this experimental MOPA arrangement no relaxation oscillations occur. A continuous wave power of 1 W under DC injection and a pulse power of 4 W under pulsed operation are reached. For both operational modes the optical spectrum of the emission of the amplifier exhibits a peak at a constant wavelength of 973.5 nm with a spectral width < 10 pm.

OCIS codes:

(140.2020) Diode lasers; (140.3280) Laser amplifiers; (140.3538) Lasers, pulsed; (140.3570) Lasers, single-mode; (250.5980) Semiconductor optical amplifiers.

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