Semiconductor disk lasers for high brightness at novel wavelengths

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• Jennifer Hastie (Strathclyde)
• Friday 15 November 2013, 14:00-15:00
• Physics East 217.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Vincent Boyer.

Semiconductor disk lasers are usually optically-pumped and have oscillation along the growth direction of the semiconductor gain structure for so-called vertical emission. They are often referred to as vertical external cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VECSE Ls. Not to be confused with more well-known VCSE Ls, a defining feature is an external macroscopic laser resonator with length of a few millimetres up to tens of centimetres. In fact, in terms of architecture and operating characteristics, they share many similarities with conventional doped dielectric solid-state lasers. The distinctiveness of VECSE Ls lies principally in outstanding wavelength versatility combined with excellent spatial and spectral brightness: the broad spectral coverage that may be achieved is due to the flexibility of semiconductor bandgap and quantum well engineering in the gain structure, free from doping constraints, and the fact that the fundamental spectral coverage can be further extended by access to the intracavity beam for efficient, low noise, nonlinear frequency conversion. In our work we have increased the spectral coverage of VECSE Ls via a combination of the use of novel gain materials, intracavity thermal management, and intracavity nonlinear up- and down-frequency-conversion. Recent examples include a high power, broadly tunable orange laser achieved via frequency doubling of a diamond Raman laser, pumped within the high finesse cavity of a tunable InGaAs-based VECSEL ; and a narrow-linewidth (16kHz) continuous wave ultraviolet laser, achieved via intracavity frequency doubling of an actively-stabilized AlGaInP-based VECSEL .

In this talk we will review the general design, spectral coverage and performance of continuous wave VECSE Ls, including our current work on combining active stabilization with intracavity nonlinear conversion for tunable, narrow linewidth operation at visible and ultraviolet wavelengths.

This talk is part of the Cold Atoms series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Bham Talks
• Cold Atoms
• Physics East 217
• What's on in Physics?

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