Princeton Lightwave targets 1kW eye-safe laser
Princeton Lightwave (PLI) has been awarded second-year funding from the US Department of Energy (DoE) to develop a 1 kW InP-pumped Er:YAG solid state laser.
The eye-safe laser will be developed in conjunction with the Army Research Laboratory through funding awarded by the DoE's High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office.
PLI's efforts will contribute to the DoE's program that's developing stacks of InP pump laser arrays operating at very high powers.
The InP pump lasers are designed to operate at wavelengths very near to the emission wavelength of the Er:YAG gain medium, as this approach greatly reduces undesirable heating of the gain medium.
"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 lasers mirror facets," added PLI chief scientist Dimitri Garbuzov.
"The photon flux for InP pump lasers can be several times larger than that of traditional GaAs-based pumps at comparable device lifetimes."
PLI has already demonstrated diode-pumped Er:YAG lasers with 100W output emitting at 1.65 µm.