High peak power cavity dumping semiconductor lasers

We report on the development of a nanosecond pulsed kW-class optically pumped InGaAs semiconductor laser emitting around 1020 nm, which is suitable for applications such as incoherent laser radar, nonlinear optics, and materials processing. Using an intracavity Pockels cell to cavity-dump VECSELs, we are able to access large pulse energies by storing energy in the optical cavity rather than in the gain medium. We demonstrate peak powers >1 kW and 3 mu J pulses, show the pulse length is equivalent to the photon round-trip time, and show that the wavelength can be tuned within the gain bandwidth of the semiconductor gain. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America