Antireflection Structures for VIS and NIR on Arbitrarily Shaped Fused Silica Substrates with Colloidal Polystyrene Nanosphere Lithography.

Antireflective (AR) nanostructures offer an effective, broadband alternative to conventional AR coatings that could be used even under extreme conditions. In this publication, a possible fabrication process based on colloidal polystyrene (PS) nanosphere lithography for the fabrication of such AR structures on arbitrarily shaped fused silica substrates is presented and evaluated. Special emphasis is placed on the involved manufacturing steps in order to be able to produce tailored and effective structures. An improved Langmuir-Blodgett self-assembly lithography technique enabled the deposition of 200 nm PS spheres on curved surfaces, independent of shape or material-specific characteristics such as hydrophobicity. The AR structures were fabricated on planar fused silica wafers and aspherical planoconvex lenses. Broadband AR structures with losses (reflection + transmissive scattering) of <1% per surface in the spectral range of 750-2000 nm were produced. At the best performance level, losses were less than 0.5%, which corresponds to an improvement factor of 6.7 compared to unstructured reference substrates.

Modeling electro-optical characteristics of broad area semiconductor lasers based on a quasi-stationary multimode analysis.

To increase the brightness of broad area laser diodes, it is necessary to tailor the optical properties of their waveguide region. For this purpose, there is the need for simulation tools which can predict the optical properties of the complete device and thus of the outcoupled light. In the present publication, we show a numerical method to calculate typical intensity distributions of the multimode beam inside a high-power semiconductor laser. The model considers effects of mode competition and the influence of the gain medium on the optical field. Simulation results show a good agreement with near and far field measurements of the analyzed broad area laser diodes.

Improving the brightness of a multi-kilowatt single thin-disk laser by an aspherical phase front correction.

We report on results obtained with an aspherical mirror to compensate for the phase front aberrations of a cw thin-disk laser with a single disk in the resonator. A record output power of 5 kW with a beam quality suitable for laser cutting (beam propagation factor M2=9.2) has been achieved.

Experimental realization of a diffractive unstable resonator with Gaussian amplitude of the outcoupled beam using a VECSEL amplifier.

Unstable resonators show an intense discrimination of undesired higher order modes but a high beam quality cannot be obtained with conventional resonators composed of spherical mirrors. In the present paper we demonstrate the possibility to tailor the fundamental mode by inserting diffractive elements into the resonator to generate a desirable output beam profile even for unstable resonators. We show a concept to design such surface structured elements for customizing the amplitude shape of the outcoupled beam. Further we demonstrate the first experimental realization of an unstable diffractive resonator with a Gaussian shaped amplitude profile of the laser beam for a vertical external cavity surface emitting laser (VECSEL).