Abstract
Self-starting pulsed operation in an electrically pumped (EP) vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting-laser (VECSEL) without intracavity saturable absorber is demonstrated. A linear hemispherical cavity design, consisting of the EP-VECSEL chip and a 10% output-coupler, is used to obtain picosecond output pulses with energies of 2.8 pJ and pulse widths of 130 ps at a repetition rate of 1.97 GHz. A complete experimental analysis of the generated output pulse train and of the transition from continuous-wave to pulsed operation is presented. Numerical simulations based on a delay-differential-equation (DDE) model of mode-locked semiconductor lasers are used to reproduce the pulse dynamics and identify different laser operation regimes. From this, the measured single pulse operation is attributed to FM-type mode-locking. The pulse formation is explained by strong amplitude-phase coupling and spectral filtering inside the EP-VECSEL.
Highlights
Pumped vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting-laser (VECSEL) are high-power, high-brightness semiconductor laser sources that benefit from low-cost, high-throughput production methods and ease of assembly and integration into optoelectronic devices [1,2,3,4]
Motivated by the self-mode-locking observed in OP-VECSELs, this paper investigates the pulse dynamics in an electrically pumped (EP)-VECSEL without semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) and with no external feedback
The intracavity peak powers in the EP-VECSEL were more than four orders of magnitude lower than the peak powers required for Kerr-lensing in OP-VECSELs [21,32,35]
Summary
Pumped VECSELs are high-power, high-brightness semiconductor laser sources that benefit from low-cost, high-throughput production methods and ease of assembly and integration into optoelectronic devices [1,2,3,4]. Mode-locked EP-VECSELs have been demonstrated with repetition rates in the range between 216 MHz [9] and 18.2 GHz [10], pulse energies of up to 36 pJ [6,9], pulse durations as short as 2.9 ps [10], and peak powers of up to 4.7 W [10]. All of these EP-VECSELs have relied on SESAMs for mode-locking. The low pulse energies in EP-VECSELs require careful optimization of SESAM parameters and small beam diameters to achieve saturation [10]
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