Aplanatic beam shaping for diffraction limited beam circularization of tapered laser diodes

摘要

Many laser applications require a circular, astigmatism-free, diffraction limited, high power beam. A tapered laser diode can generate up to 6 W output power in a diffraction limited beam. However the beam is elliptical and highly astigmatic rendering the design of beam shaping challenging. We present a diffraction limited beam shaping design, especially suitable to circularize and collimate highly astigmatic beams. The setup consists of a simple plano-convex cylindrical lens in the aplanatic condition and an asphere. The first lens matches the divergence of the fast- to the slow axis at the point where the beam is circular while the following asphere collimates the beam. The aplanatic condition is fulfilled by choosing a glass with a specific refractive index depending on the ratio between fast- and slow axis divergence. This cylindrical lens introduces neither spherical error nor primary coma, which makes it insensitive to misalignment. The setup has been tested with a high power laser diode at 980 nm with a 6 mm long taper (angle 6°) and a facet width of 425 μm. The optics have a transmission of about 90% and the resulting beam has a M~2 ＜ 1.5. As a proof of principle 3.2 W were coupled into a 15 μm (NA 0.06) LMA fiber with 55% efficiency corresponding to a brightness B = 140 MW/(cm~2 sr). Furthermore the presented beam shaping can easily be extended to bars or multiple emitters to reach power levels that are to date only achievable with complex wavelength combination techniques.