Abstract

Laser light around 1064 nm is of great interest to research, industry and medical applications. The development of lasers and amplifiers with tapered gain regions has helped to combine multiwatt output power and improved beam properties of semiconductor based devices [1,2]. Therefore, tapered semiconductor lasers and amplifiers may become a low-footprint, high efficiency complement to common Nd:YAG lasers. In addition, a range of future applications, especially laser TV, calls for robust and compact green laser sources. One promising approach is the conversion of infrared laser radiation generated by semiconductor laser diodes into green light by frequency doubling. Since the conversion efficiency of this nonlinear optical process depends superlinearly on the incident pump power density, the initial laser source has to provide a high output power combined with a good beam quality and a narrow line width. Again, frequency stabilized tapered amplifiers in an external cavity setup can meet these demands.

© 2009 IEEE