M. Zorn^a, P. Klopp^b, F. Saas^b, A. Ginolas^a, O. Krüger^a, U. Griebner^b, M. Weyers^a

Published in:

J. Cryst. Growth, vol. 310, no. 23, pp. 5187-5190 (2008).

Abstract:

Diode-pumped semiconductor disk lasers (SCDLs), also known as optically-pumped semiconductor vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (OPS-VECSELs), are promising light sources for achieving high output power in combination with nearly diffraction-limited beam quality as well as for generating short pulses at very high repetition rates. Combining a SCDL gain section with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SAM) and a pump laser diode allows for simple mode-locked all-semiconductor laser designs. The design of these SAM and SCDL gain structures grown by metal- organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) is presented discussing the different approaches to obtain short pulses. For the SAM structures the common design using an As-implanted and annealed quantum well (QW) was replaced by a structure using a surface-near QW, which caused a significant reduction of the relaxation time.SCDL gain structures with 4-13 QWs and different barrier designs were tested. The shortest pulses were achieved with an asymmetric 4-QW-graded-index barrier design. Pumping this optimized SCDL gain element with an 840 nm laser diode, pulses as short as 290 fs at a repetition rate of 3 GHz and a wavelength of 1036 nm have been obtained.

Keywords:

A3. Metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy B2. Semiconducting III-V materials B3. Semiconductor disk laser B3. Vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser

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