Abstract: Double clad large mode area planar lasers or amplifiers comprising rare-earth or transition metal doped planar core regions are used to generate near-diffraction-limited optical beams of ultra-high power. The amplified light is guided in the core using different guiding mechanisms in two orthogonal axes inside the core. Waveguiding along a first long core axis is obtained substantially by gain-guiding or thermal lensing. Waveguiding along a second short core axis is obtained by index guiding. This is accomplished by surrounding the planar core region with regions of different refractive index. The long sides of the planar core region are surrounded with a depressed refractive index cladding region. The short sides of the planar core region are surrounded with a cladding region substantially index-matched to the core region. The whole structure is surrounded by an outer cladding region with a low refractive index to enable cladding pumping of the planar waveguide with high-power diode lasers.

Abstract: An optical beam-shaping element is used to produce a high brightness laser beam from a diode bar or a single emitter diode, allowing for efficient coupling of the beam into an optical fiber. An embodiment of the beam-shaping element allows the construction of a quasi-monolithic beam shaper incorporating both fast axis collimation as well as beam rotation. Additional slow axis collimation of the individual emitting elements of the diode bar is also possible in one quasi-monolithic design. The beam rotation element may comprise an array of beam-inverting planar grin lenses aligned with their axes of equal refractive index at an angle of ±45° with respect to the slow axes of the emitters. Alternative embodiments comprise beam rotation elements based on Fresnel lens arrays or aspheric cylindrical lens arrays.

Abstract: A partially mirror coated parallelepipedal form is oriented to divide collimated beams along the longitudinal axes from a plurality of diode lasers arranged side-by-side along their transverse axis. The divided partial beams are subsequently recombined and arranged side-by-side along their transverse axis using the same rhomboidal form, where the parallelepipedal form and the polarization state of the collimated diode laser beams are oriented to minimize the insertion loss of the device. The side by side arranged partial beams are further coupled into an optical fiber positioned downstream of the parallelepipedal form to deliver a beam with high optical brightness.

Abstract: An optical beam shaping element is used to produce a beam of high brightness from a diode bar or a single emitter diode, allowing for efficient coupling of the beam into an optical fiber. An embodiment of the beam shaping element allows the construction of a quasi-monolithic or truly monolithic beam shaper incorporating both fast axis collimation as well as beam rotation. Additional slow axis collimation or collimation of the beam-rotated fast axes of the individual emitting elements of the diode bar is also possible in one quasi-monolithic or truly monolithic design. The beam rotation element comprises an array of beam-inverting planar grin lenses aligned with their axes of equal refractive index at an angle of ±45° with respect to the slow axes of the emitters. Alterative embodiments comprise beam rotation elements based on two planar grin lens arrays, arrays of uniaxial grin lenses, arrays of uniaxial focusing reflective optic or arrays of cylindrical Fresnel lenses.