External cavity spectral beam combining of 4.6 µm emitting quantum cascade laser arrays

Author

Ostendorf, R. ; Hugger, S. ; Aidam, R. ; Bronner, W. ; Fuchs, F. ; Loesch, R. ; Yang, Q. ; Wagner, J. ; Romasew, E. ; Raab, M. ; Tholl, H.D.

Author_Institution

Fraunhofer Inst. for Appl. Solid State Phys., Freiburg, Germany

fYear

2010

fDate

26-30 Sept. 2010

Firstpage

51

Lastpage

52

Abstract

Spectral beam combining of linear arrays of quantum cascade (QC) lasers emitting at 4.6 μm is demonstrated as a viable approach towards power-upscaling. By using an external cavity setup equipped with a diffraction grating and a partially transmitting output mirror providing wavelength selective feedback to each emitter, up to 8 individual QC lasers are combined with an optical coupling efficiency of 60% for an array of 6 emitters. The resulting beam quality (M²<;;2 for both fast and slow axis) is close to that observed for single emitters.

Keywords

diffraction gratings; laser cavity resonators; laser feedback; laser mirrors; quantum cascade lasers; semiconductor laser arrays; diffraction grating; external cavity spectral beam combining; partially transmitting output mirror; power upscaling; quantum cascade laser arrays; wavelength 4.6 mum; wavelength selective feedback; Laser beams; Laser feedback; Laser modes; Power generation; Power lasers; Quantum cascade lasers; Waveguide lasers; QC lasers; coupling efficiency; external cavity; micro lens array; power scaling; quantum cascade lasers; spectral beam combining;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Semiconductor Laser Conference (ISLC), 2010 22nd IEEE International

Conference_Location

Kyoto

ISSN

0899-9406

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5683-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISLC.2010.5642758

Filename

5642758