Novel 980-nm and 490-nm light sources using vertical-cavity lasers with extended coupled cavities

We have developed novel electrically pumped, surface-emitting lasers emitting at 980 nm with an extended coupled cavity. The concept is scalable from monolithic low power (~10 mW) devices all the way to high power extended cavity lasers. The latter have demonstrated ~1 W cw multi-mode and 0.5 W cw in a TEM00 mode and a single frequency, with 90% coupling efficiency into a single-mode fiber. By inserting a nonlinear optical medium in the external cavity, efficient and compact frequency doubling has been achieved with CW output powers 5-40 mW demonstrated at 490 nm. The latter devices are especially noteworthy due to their very low noise (0.05% rms from dc-2 MHz), sub 10 mrad beam pointing stability combined with small size, low power consumption (<10 W) and high efficiency.