Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Institute of Optics, 2015.
The performance of high-power broad-area diode lasers is inhibited by beam filamentation induced by free-carrier-based self-focusing. The resulting beam degradation limits their usage in high-brightness, high-power applications such as pumping fiber lasers, and laser cutting, welding, or marking. Finite-difference propagation method simulations via RSoft’s BeamPROP commercial simulation suite and a custom-built MATLAB code were used for the study and design of laser cavities that suppress or avoid filamentation. BeamPROP was used to design a tapered, passive, multi-mode interference cavity for the creation of a self-phase-locking laser array, which is comprised of many single-mode gain elements coupled to a wide output coupler to avoid damage from local high optical intensities. MATLAB simulations were used to study the effects of longitudinal and lateral cavity confinement on lateral beam quality in conventional broad-area lasers. This simulation was expanded to design a laser with lateral gain and index prescription that is predicted to operate at or above state-of-the-art powers while being efficiently coupled to conventional telecom single-mode optical fibers. Experimentally, a commercial broad-area laser was coupled in the far-field to a single-mode fiber Bragg grating to provide grating-stabilized single-mode laser feedback resulting in measured spectral narrowing for efficient pump absorption. Additionally a 19 GHz-span, spatially resolved, self-heterodyne measurement was made of a broad-area laser to study the evolution/devolution of the mode content of the emitted laser beam with increasing power levels.
