1.9 J external-cavity dumped ultra-broad-area semiconductor nanosecond laser

An external-cavity dumped nanosecond (ns) ultra-broadarea laser diode (UBALD) at around 966nm with high pulse energy is demonstrated. A 1mm UBALD is used to produce high output power and high pulse energy. A Pockels cell (PC) combines with two polarization beam splitters (PBSs) and is employed to cavity-dump a UBALD operating at 10 kHz repetition rate. At a pump current of 23 A, 11.4 ns pulses with a maximum pulse energy of approximate to 1.9 mu J and a maximum peak power of approximate to 166Ware achieved. The beam quality factor is measured to be M-x(2) = 19.5 in the slow axis direction and M-y (2) = 2.17 in the fast axis direction. Moreover, maximum average output power stability is confirmed, with a power fluctuation of less than 0.8% rms over 60 min. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first high-energy external-cavity dumped demonstration from an UBALD. (c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group