With the aim of applying complex master/slave interferometry (CMSI) to polarizationsensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) for birefringent tomographic measurements of biological tissue, we present the impact of temperature instability on an all-fiber-based depth-encoded PS-OCT system and the practicality of temperature control for birefringence measurements. In our PS-OCT system, two orthogonally polarized interrogating beams were separated to a depth of approximately 1 mm using a 5-meter long polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) as a passive delay unit, which is susceptible to temperature instability. The variation in resolution and delay due to temperature change of PMF were investigated. Furthermore, it is shown that tomographic birefringence can be measured under temperature-controlled operation utilizing the advantages of CMSI. We found that changes to the location of generated masks caused by an emerging temperature drift between the channels can be corrected with our presented characterization.
Membrane external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (MECSELs) are a new kind of vertically emitting semiconductor laser with enormous potential and versatility for tailoring the laser parameters. Part of their benefits is related to the fact that they do not need to employ integrated distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs), which are known to hamper the heat transfer and limit wavelength versatility via strain and band-gap engineering constrains. Furthermore, the substrate on which the active region is grown on is removed and the resulting thin active region membrane is sandwiched between transparent intra cavity heat spreaders for improved thermal management.
In recent years, MECSELs have experienced a rapid progress. With all their benefits, where an intrinsically excellent beam quality is just one of it, new dynamics were brought into the field of vertically emitting semiconductor lasers. The most important advances, like the radical design simplification, double-side pumping and power scaling capabilities play a major role. Also, wavelengths not yet covered by classical vertical emitters like VCSELs and VECSELs (vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers and vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers) have been reached as growth related limitations or difficulties introduced by the DBR do not play a role anymore. The latest developments on continuous wave broadband tunable MECSELs (> 25 THz) will be discussed as well as the relevance of non-resonant designs of semiconductor gain membranes sandwiched between transparent heat spreaders.
We demonstrate our latest work towards a red-emitting semiconductor membrane external-cavity surface-emitting laser (MECSEL) for applications in OCT. This light source technology employs both a near-diffraction limited beam profile (M2 ≥ 1.05) and a broad tuning range at tailorable emission wavelength. Due to their potential for mass production, combined with the usage of broadly available CMOS-sensors as detector units, OCT imaging device costs can be reduced to a significant amount, while delivering state-of-the-art image quality.
We report on the performance of MECSELs based on a non-resonant gain structure in respect with the operating lasing emission wavelength at 800 nm. Preliminary observations reveal an output power of 1.1 Watt and a 20 nm tuning range.
Membrane external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (MECSELs) are vertically emitting semiconductor lasers that combine all the benefits of VECSELs (vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers) with the new degree of freedom in creating gain structures without monolithically integrated distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs). The absence of the DBR and the substrate, and the use of a very thin gain membrane (typically some hundreds of nanometers), which can be sandwiched between two transparent heat spreaders, represents the best solution for heat removal. The membrane configuration also allows the option of double side pumping, which in turn makes it possible to utilize an extensive amount of quantum well (QW) groups as well as multiple kinds of QWs in a periodic laser gain structure. Here we report on design strategy and results of different kinds of approaches on broadband, relatively high power MECSEL gain structures. Especially efficient pump absorption, sufficient gain on several different wavelengths and carrier mobility during laser operation, are discussed. We also present the characteristics of the laser systems created. Results show ∼ 83 nm (∼ 25 THz) tuning range with more than 100 mW of power at all wavelengths at room temperature operation. Strategies for further development are discussed as well.
Thermal simulations based on the finite-element method provide an estimation of what the heat management in membrane external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (MECSELs) is capable of: When considering diamond and SiC heat spreaders, double-side cooling (DSC) leads to gain membrane temperatures that are about a factor two lower than with single-side cooling (SSC). For the thermally worse conductive sapphire, the temperature benefit from DSC can be up to four times lower than with SSC. Diamonds as heat spreaders are recommended over SiC if the power for pumping the gain membrane is three times larger, for instance at 30W at a pump beam diameter of 180 μm. Sapphire can be favored over SiC if the pump power is about five times lower, for instance at 2W. Due to the limited lateral heat flow activity of sapphire, a smaller pump beam diameter of 90 μm is suggested. A super-Gaussian pump beam can be used instead of a Gaussian pump beam to lower the gain membrane maximum temperature by a factor of three. Double-side pumping becomes significantly more important as soon as the gain membrane gets thicker than 1 μm.
We report on the latest developments of very broadband gain MECSELs operating in the 9XX to 10XX nm spectral range. Preliminary results show room temperature operation with barrier pumping of the gain structure.
In AlGaInP based VECSELs, a low thermal conductivity of the substrate with included distributed Bragg reflector leads to a strong temperature-dependent performance due to the limited charge-carrier confinement. For efficient heat removal, a good bonding between VECSEL-chip and intra-cavity heat spreader is indispensable. Here, a new designed sample holding device which allows improved bonding is presented. With this device, the laser performance of a barrier-pumped AlGaInP VECSEL emitting at 665 nm could be improved tremendously which resulted in an output power of more than 1W at a heatsink temperature of 10°C. We present a full characterization of the laser system including a comparison between standard and the new device.
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