We present optical pulse generation with 100 W peak power, 3 ps temporal duration, and 1 GHz repetition from a GaInN master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA). An external cavity GaInN laser diode is passively mode-locked to generate 4 W peak power optical pulses as a master oscillator, and a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) effectively amplified these to a high peak power of more than 100 W. Two major factors that contributed to effective amplification of optical pulses were the generation of clean optical pulses without sub-pulse components by the GaInN mode-locked laser diode and suppression of amplified spontaneous emission in the SOA. This novel high-peak-power pulse source is used to induce multi-photon absorption to create sub-micrometer recording marks in a bulk plastic recording media. The realization of an all-semiconductor pulse source is a significant breakthrough towards a practical 3D optical data storage system.

Date Published: 16 February 2011
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 7953, Novel In-Plane Semiconductor Lasers X, 79530J (16 February 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.877030

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7953:
Novel In-Plane Semiconductor Lasers X
Alexey A. Belyanin; Peter M. Smowton, Editor(s)