Laser diode stack beam shaping by reflective two-wedge-angle prism arrays

An innovative beam-shaping method for laser diode stacking is presented by employing a pair of reflective two-wedge-angle prism arrays. Each subprism with two variable wedge angles is designed for deflecting the partial emission from different bars to the dead spaces of the stack, according to the configuration of the real laser diode (LD) stack and the requirement of the system. The formula to determine the parameters of each subprism is deduced by way of geometrical analysis. A beam-shaping system for stack laser diodes with three bars is designed and simulated, and the results show that the stack laser beam is well transformed into a required distribution efficiently. (c) 2005 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.

[1]  Michael Nickel,et al.  High-brightness fiber-coupled diode laser module , 1998, Photonics West.

[2]  Robert H. Rediker,et al.  Use of a diffractive optics transformer preceded by a corrector lens in a high-power semiconductor laser system , 1994, Photonics West - Lasers and Applications in Science and Engineering.

[3]  Brian O. Faircloth,et al.  High-brightness high-power fiber coupled diode laser system for material processing and laser pumping , 2003, SPIE LASE.

[4]  Veit Bluemel,et al.  2-kW cw fiber-coupled diode laser system , 2000, Advanced High-Power Lasers and Applications.

[5]  A. Ovtchinnikov,et al.  High-brightness semiconductor laser sources for materials processing: stacking, beam shaping, and bars , 2000, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[6]  Friedrich G. Bachmann,et al.  High-power diode laser technology and applications , 2000, Advanced High-Power Lasers and Applications.