Paul Crump

The publisher's note contains a correction to [ Opt. Express 33 , 46456 ( 2025 ) 10.1364/OE.575048 ]. The article was corrected on 17 December 2025.

Diode laser pumps are a critical enabling technology for inertial fusion energy (IFE), and will remain the largest contributor to facility cost, even assuming tenfold cost-reduction at high volumes. An overview of diode requirements for IFE and a technology path to achieve them are presented.

We present here an approach to flattening the lateral thermal lens that develops in kW-class semiconductor laser bars consisting of multiple broad-area emitters and is responsible for limiting the power, conversion efficiency and beam quality of the bars. Simulation results show that by increasing heat at the edge-emitters of the bars, thermal lens can be diminished. With an experiment on single-emitters, we demonstrated that the required heat in the edge-emitters can be achieved by shortening their pump length. Following these studies, we fabricated 1-cm wide bars containing 37 emitters, each with a 186- $\mu $ m-wide stripe and a 4-mm-long resonator. In contrast to the baseline bars with equally and fully pumped emitters, the best-designed bars with an optimum (shorter) pump length only in the edge-emitters yield a 5%-points higher conversion efficiency, and an improved beam quality, narrowing the lateral beam divergence at 95% power content by over 10% at 0.8 kW power.

We perform modeling and dynamic simulations of all-semiconductor photonic crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs). A two-dimensional photonic crystal consists of a GaAs layer with InGaP features, repeating periodically in both lateral directions. In our dynamic simulations, we demonstrate that photonic crystals with large isosceles triangular features, having a base angle close to 71.5°, enable suppression of higher-order modes and achieve single-mode lasing in large-area all-semiconductor PCSELs under moderate and high pump levels.

A general theory for the intrinsic (Lorentzian) linewidth of photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs) is presented. The effect of spontaneous emission is modeled by a classical Langevin force entering the equation for the slowly varying waves. The solution of the coupled-wave equations, describing the propagation of four basic waves within the plane of the photonic crystal, is expanded in terms of the solutions of the associated spectral problem, i.e. the laser modes. Expressions are given for photon number, rate of spontaneous emission into the laser mode, Petermann factor and effective Henry factor entering the general formula for the linewidth. The theoretical framework is applied to the calculation of the linewidth-power product of air-hole and all-semiconductor PCSELs. For output powers in the Watt range, intrinsic linewidths in the kHz range are obtained in agreement with recent experimental results.

We report on the design of a photonic crystal surface emitting laser (PCSEL) with an all-semiconductor (InGaP/GaAs) photonic crystal suitable for very-large-area emission and high-power operation. Using coupled-wave theory for PCSELs we model infinite- and finite-size cavity PCSELs and show that a photonic crystal unit cell with square lattice periodicity and a rotated and stretched triangular feature is suitable for the realization of PCSELs with very large areas (1 mm<L < 3 mm for a square cavity of size L × L) while maintaining high mode discrimination between the fundamental laser mode and higher order cavity modes as well as high external efficiency. This was achieved by exploiting a single-lattice photonic crystal unit cell design that minimizes one-dimensional coupling in the photonic crystal, providing a promising alternative to double-lattice PCSELs.

Current progress in the scaling of continuous wave optical output power and conversion efficiency of broad-area GaAs-based edge emitters, broad-area lasers (BALs), operating in the 900…1000 nm wavelength range is presented. Device research and engineering efforts have ensured that BALs remain the most efficient of all light sources, so that in the past 10 years, power conversion efficiency at 20 W continuous wave (CW) output power from BA lasers with a 90…100 μm wide stripe has increased 1.5-fold to 57% (via epitaxial layer design developments), whilst peak CW power per single emitter has increased around 3-fold to 70 W (via scaling of device size), with further scaling underway, for example via use of multi-junction designs. However, the peak achievable CW power conversion efficiency and CW specific output power (defined here as peak output power from a 100 μm stripe diode lasers with a single p-n junction) has changed remarkably little, remaining around 70% and 25 W, respectively, for the past decade. Fortunately, research to understand the limits to peak efficiency and specific output power has also shown progress. Specifically, recent studies indicate that spatial non-uniformity in optical field and temperature play a major role in limiting both power and conversion efficiency. Technological efforts motivated by these discoveries to flatten lateral and longitudinal temperature profiles have successfully increased both power and efficiency. In addition, epitaxial layer designs with very high modal gain successfully reduce threshold current and increase slope at 25°C to values comparable to those observed at 200 K, offering a path toward the 80% conversion efficiency range currently seen only at these cryogenic temperatures. Overall, whilst operating efficiency and power continue to scale rapidly, a technological path for increased specific power and peak efficiency is also emerging.