Abstract

A two-dimensional dynamic beam propagation model [1] has been developed to isolate mechanisms for far field broadening and engineer improved laser beam quality in high brightness tapered waveguide lasers. These low beam divergence, high brightness devices have many possible applications, including low-cost pumps for fibre amplifiers and lasers. Spatially resolved thermal models have so far been used to describe the role of hot spots on filamentation in tapered waveguide amplifiers [2]. Here we show theoretically for the first time that the far field narrows with good suppression of higher order modes for an appropriate temperature rise, without significant power penalty, in agreement with experiment.

© 1998 IEEE