Fabrication of Very Small Aperture Laser (VSAL) from a Commercial Edge Emitting Laser

In this paper we report a method for producing very small aperture lasers (VSALs) from low-cost, commercial index guided edge emitting diode lasers. The detailed fabrication procedure is provided and the VSALs are characterized. Both high power and high aperture power to background noise power ratio are obtained even with a small aperture. This fabrication method can be applied to most commercial diode lasers without knowledge of the detailed geometry and is highly reproducible.