Abstract

Laser diode bars emit lots of power, but the spatial and spectral quality of their output beam is atrocious. We report preliminary experiments to both improve a laser bar’s spatial beam quality and to narrow its frequency spectrum by coupling the laser bar to a self-pumped phase conjugator. Our off-the-shelf laser bar (SDL-3480-S) has 12 gain regions spaced along a 1-cm-long semiconductor junction. The large separation between adjacent gain regions makes each gain region operate as an isolated broad-area laser.

© 1994 Optical Society of America