Princeton nets $1 million to develop InP lasers
US-based Princeton Lightwave (PLI), which produces near-infrared diode lasers and detectors, has won $1 million in funding to develop a new kind of solid-state laser.
The US Air Force contract will culminate in the development of multi-kilowatt eye-safe solid state lasers based on diode-laser pumping of an erbium-doped crystal.
PLI will spend the cash developing its InP-based high-power lasers, which are based on separate confinement quantum well structures. The design allows control of the injection current components and minimizes optical losses.
Central to the program, funded under the Department of Defense s High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office, is the development of InP-based two-dimensional diode pump laser arrays with very high output powers.
These laser arrays will be optimized for pumping an Er:YAG crystal gain medium at wavelengths very close to the solid-state laser s emission wavelength.
According to PLI, this design will greatly reduce undesirable heating of the crystal and allow for the laser systems to be scaled up for multi-kilowatt output while maintaining high beam quality.
"The transition to InP-based long wavelength pump lasers is a natural progression for the next generation of long wavelength eye-safe solid state and fiber lasers," said Dimitri Garbuzov, PLI s chief scientist.
"In addition to alleviating active media overheating, the use of InP-based pump sources avoids a critical problem inherent to GaAs diode lasers associated with the degradation of the diode laser mirror facets. The photon flux for InP pump lasers can be several times larger than that of traditional GaAs-based pumps at comparable device lifetimes," Garbuzov added.
