940-nm Broad Area Diode Lasers Optimized for High Pulse-Power Fiber Coupled Applications

Diode lasers with 400- μm stripe widths measured in pulsed-current mode are shown to reach peak (saturation) powers of 60 W for 1-ms pulses (60 mJ) and 189 W for 300-ns pulses ( ~ 55 μJ). Use of laterally structured contact and etched index guides at the stripe edges enables these devices to sustain stable lateral near- and far-field profiles to the highest bias, with a lateral beam parameter product of . Optical calculations are presented for an example system where arrays of these single emitters are incoherently coupled into a fiber with 1-mm core and numerical aperture of 0.22, extrapolating 5 kW in fiber for 1 ms (5 J) and 18 kW in fiber for 300-ns pulses ( ~ 5 mJ). Such sources would be well suited for pumping Yb:YAG crystals for applications needing high beam quality, or as direct sources.