Single and dual-chip high peak-power semiconductor laser

To date high power, high energy pulses in the few ns rage have been unobtainable in semiconductor lasers due to the short carrier lifetime and long cavity buildup times. In this paper we show a wavelength and pulse-width tunable semiconductor laser that is able to achieve pulses in the range of a few ns at power levels above 1 kW leading to several mu J pulse energies. This was done by inserting a polarizing beam splitter (PBS) and a lambda/4 Pockels Cell (PC) into the cavity of a vertical external cavity surface emitting laser (VECSEL) allowing access to the high energy stored in the VECSEL cavity. The PC is used to electronically control the cavity polarization and with proper tailoring, all the photons built up within the cavity may be completely dumped within a single photon round trip. After this the PC is switched off and the light in the cavity is allowed to build up once again. Once the light has built back up, the VECSEL is ready to be dumped again. This has been demonstrated in both single gain chip and dual gain chip setups. We record a maximum pulse energy of 7.78 mu J and peak power of 1.7 kW at a wavelength of 1019 nm with a tunability of 16 nm.