High power picosecond and nanosecond diode laser sources in the wavelength range 650 nm to 1100 nm

Optical pulses in the nanosecond and picosecond ranges can be generated by gain switching, Q-switching and mode-locking of diode lasers, either as stand-alone devices or in MOPA systems combining master oscillators (MOs) and power amplifiers (PAs). A review of recent progress achieved at FBH is presented. With a gain switched ridge waveguide (RW) laser optical pulses with a width of 1 ns and more than 5 nJ energy have been generated. Higher pulse peak powers up to 250 Watts (13 μJ) have been reached by gain switching a broad area laser with an in-house developed electronic circuit. Spectrally stable 5 ns long optical pulses with powers of 4 W and 16 W have generated with a RW amplifier and a tapered amplifier, respectively.