High-power 980-nm pump lasers

Summary form only given. The erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is now being widely deployed in both telecommunications and cable television systems. A critical component in these amplifiers is the semiconductor pump laser. The EDFA can employ pump lasers at either the 1480 nm or 980 nm absorption band. This paper reports both performance and reliability of lasers at 980 nm intended for use as pumps on EDFAs. An alternate pump source for EDFAs is the semiconductor master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) chip. This device consists of a low power distributed Bragg reflector master oscillator that feeds a monolithic power amplifier. The on-chip optical amplifier can give up to 20 dB gain without significant distortion of the single mode beam. While the best results from these designs are greater than 2 W of diffraction limited output power, reliable chips can be manufactured at closer to 1 W of diffraction limited power. Both fiber coupling and reliability results for this MOPA are presented.