Optical Design and Beam Shaping in High Power Semiconductor Lasers

With improving of the performances, semiconductor lasers are becoming attractive as light sources in many fields, such as direct material processing, high power solid-state laser and fiber laser pumping, medical and display applications. However, the poor beam quality is still the main bottleneck limiting their further applications. In order to expand the applications of semiconductor lasers, beam shaping and optical design are essential. Generally speaking, the poor beam quality is due to the waveguide properties of the active region of semiconductor lasers. In this chapter, we will discuss the beam performances of semiconductor lasers in Sect. 5.1. The beam shaping and fiber coupling principles and design methods of a single emitter, a bar, and a stack will be discussed in Sect. 5.2. Section 5.3 presents beam combining and high brightness techniques.