Influence of Optical Field Design on Catastrophic Optical Damage in Laser Chips

Abstract

As high-power semiconductor lasers are applied more and more widely, the catastrophic optical damage (COD) is getting larger and larger. In this paper, the influence of COD is demonstrated in detail through in-depth analysis on the phenomenon and formation mechanism of high-power semiconductor laser chip COD, and finally, the optical field distribution in the chip is optimized through experiment. As the result, the conventional Gauss field distribution is optimized to the flat-toped beam distribution; both the peak power density of the cavity surface and the nonradiation level of the cavity surface are reduced; and the COD value of laser chip is improved by 15%∼20%. The results proves the correctness of the theoretical analysis, and provides a technical reference for improving the overall parameters of high-power semiconductor.