Injection seeding employing continuous wavelength sweeping for master-slave resonance

Abstract

A method for effective injection seeding is based on continuous wavelength sweeping for matching the injected seeds with one or more longitudinal mode(s) of the slave oscillator in every pump pulse. This is achieved through rapidly varying laser drive current resulted from RF modulation. Depending on the modulation parameters, the seed may be operated at quasi-CW or pulsed mode, with a narrow or broad bandwidth, for injection seeding of single longitudinal mode or multimode. The wavelength and bandwidth of the laser output can be tuned according to the needs. From pulse to pulse, the master-slave resonance may occur at different wavelengths upon cavity length fluctuations. Cavity length control via complicated feedback devices and phase locking schemes are consequently not required. The present invention also encompasses an injection seeded solid-state laser constructed in accordance with the inventive method and a novel application of RF modulated laser diode to spectral purification and producing high power Gaussian beam with narrow pulse width in a stable, reliable, and cost-effective manner.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.