SBIR-STTR Award

The proposed research is intended to be a major step inthe development of a modelocked diode laser system, capable oF replacing several expensive and complex components used in seeding of OPO, OPA, and OPG, with direct applications in nonlinear optical diagnostics. The company has successfully demonstrated a mode locked diode laser system which features hybird modelocking and produces 100 picojoule pulses at 100 M2Iz.An advanced wide stripe semiconductor will be obtained andintegrated during this effort. These components, in combinationwith changes to the optical cavity, are estimated to increase theoutput energy of this device be an order of magnitude, to overone nanojoule. Pulse duration of 200 femtoseconds has beenachieved with the present design and the second objective of thisresearch will be to shorten this to less than 150 femtoseconds byuse of an innovative new type of saturable absorber. Anadditional objective of this work is to use the results oflaboratory testing to evaluate three approaches to raising diodeenergy further, with a goat of 10 nanojoules. A design studydocumenting the best approach for achieving this level will be awork product of the project.Potential commercial applications of the research:Integratedsolid-state source for direct seeding of OPO; source for pumpingregenerative amplifier to seed OPA or OPG; medical imagingsystem; optical test instrument (timing pulse).