BAPTISTE CHOMET,1,2 JIAN ZHAO,3,6 LAURENCE FERRIERES,1 MIKHAEL MYARA,2 GERMAIN GUIRAUD,3,4
GRÉGOIRE BEAUDOIN,5 VINCENT LECOCQ,1 ISABELLE SAGNES,5 NICHOLAS TRAYNOR,4
GIORGIO SANTARELLI,3,* STEPHANE DENET,1 AND ARNAUD GARNACHE2
1 Innoptics, Institut d’Optique d’Aquitaine, Rue François Mitterrand, Talence, France
2 Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes (IES), CNRS UMR5214, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France
3 Laboratoire Photonique, Numérique et Nanosciences (LP2N), Institut d’Optique Graduate School, CNRS, Université de Bordeaux,
Talence, France
4 Azur Light Systems, Av. de la Canteranne, Pessac, France
5 C2N-CNRS—Université Paris Sud, Marcoussis, France
6 Current address: MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurement, School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and
Technology, 1037 Luoyu Rd., Wuhan 430074, China
*Corresponding author: giorgio.santarelli@institutoptique.fr
Exploiting III-V semiconductor technologies, vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) technology has been identified for years as a good candidate to develop lasers with high power, large coherence, and broad tunability. Combined with fiber amplification technology, tunable single-frequency lasers can be flexibly boosted to a power level of several tens of watts. Here, we demonstrate a high-power, single-frequency, and broadly tunable laser based on VECSEL technology. This device emits in the near-infrared around 1.06 μm and exhibits high output power (>100 mW) with a low-divergence diffraction-limited TEM00 beam. It also features a narrow freerunning linewidth of <400 kHz with high spectral purity (side mode suppression ratio >55 dB) and continuous broadband tunability greater than 250 GHz (<15 V piezo voltage, 6 kHz cutoff frequency) with a total tunable range up to 3 THz. In addition, a compact design without any movable intracavity elements offers a robust singlefrequency regime. Through fiber amplification, a tunable single-frequency laser is achieved at an output power of 50 W covering the wavelength range from 1057 to 1066 nm. Excess intensity noise brought on by the amplification stage is in good agreement with a theoretical model. A low relative intensity noise value of −145 dBc∕Hz is obtained at 1 MHz, and we reach the shot-noise limit above 200 MHz.
https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.57.005224
