Highly Scalable Spectrally-Narrowed Surface-Emitting Arrays for Eye-Safe Lasers

Diode pumped lasers have military applications including directed energy weaponry, target designation, and LADAR imaging, as well as many civilian uses. Unfortunately, standard lasers generate beams near 1000 nm, which are very hazardous to the eyes of friendly and noncombatant personnel, which severely restricts their use. Erbium doped lasers generate much safer beams in the 1500 nm band, but are not yet practical for directed energy because the broad spectra of existing pump diode arrays are too broad for efficient absorption, and because existing pumps are too expensive. QPC has demonstrated, in Phase I, pump lasers using a novel laser architecture called HPSEL (High Power Surface Emitting Laser) which provides much narrower, strongly absorbed pump beams which are strongly absorbed in Erbium, resulting in much higher laser efficiency and power. HPSEL pump arrays emit in the vertical direction and can be fabricated and tested at wafer level much more cheaply than conventional, edge-emitting arrays.