Mode-matching system for tunable external cavity laser
OwnerNestor Farmiga, Michael Litzenberger +1inventors
InventorsNestor Farmiga, Michael Litzenberger, Mark Tronolone
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Abstract
An external cavity laser includes a lasing cavity and an optically coupled feedback cavity having differently spaced resonant lasing and feedback mode frequencies. The lasing modes can be collectively or individually matched to selected feedback modes. For example, a current driving the lasing cavity can be adjusted to shift individual lasing modes into alignment with the selected feedback modes.
Claims47
A mode-matching system for tunable external cavity lasers, comprising:
- a lasing cavity having a set of initial lasing cavity modes favoring amplification of unevenly spaced beam frequencies;
- a fixed length feedback cavity optically coupled to the lasing cavity and having a set of feedback cavity modes favoring feedback of more evenly spaced beam frequencies to the lasing cavity;
- and
- a nonlinear optical path length adjuster that relatively alters the frequencies of the lasing cavity modes to match selected frequencies of the feedback cavity modes.
A frequency tuning system for an external cavity laser, comprising:
- a lasing cavity containing an amplifying medium for amplifying a range of frequencies and having a lasing cavity length favoring certain initial resonant lasing frequencies;
- the amplifying medium exhibiting a nonlinear variation in refractive index over the range of amplified frequencies and having an effect of unevenly spacing the initial resonant lasing frequencies;
- a feedback cavity optically coupled to the lasing cavity and having a fixed feedback cavity length favoring certain initial resonant feedback frequencies having a different spacing pattern than the initial resonant lasing frequencies;
- a frequency selector that selects among the resonant feedback frequencies for favoring amplification of corresponding resonant lasing frequencies;
- and
- a nonlinear resonant frequency adjuster that relatively alters the resonant lasing frequencies with respect to the resonant feedback frequencies to individually match the relatively altered resonant lasing frequencies to selected resonant feedback frequencies.
A method of mode matching between a lasing cavity and a feedback cavity of an external cavity laser, comprising steps of:
- optically coupling a feedback cavity having resonant feedback modes that are substantially evenly spaced to a lasing cavity having resonant lasing modes that are unevenly spaced over a range of frequencies amplified within the lasing cavity;
- setting an optical path length of the feedback cavity to relate an integer multiple of the spacing between feedback cavity modes to the spacing between one or more pairs of lasing cavity modes within the lasing cavity;
- selecting among the feedback cavity modes for amplification;
- and
- relatively adjusting other of the lasing cavity modes to match the selected feedback cavity modes.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.