High-power 808-nm tapered diode lasers with nearly diffraction-limited beam quality of M/sup 2/=1.9 at P=4.4 W

High-power 808-nm tapered diode lasers mounted as single emitters with very good brightness were manufactured and analyzed. The beam propagation ratio M
²
is 1.9 at 4.4 W; a very low beam propagation ratio M
²
of 1.3 is achieved at 3.9 W. At 808 nm, the high brightness of 460 MWmiddotcm
^-2
sr
^-1
never reported before is a step forward toward new applications of tapered diode lasers