Patent Application
20170149197
Embodiments of the present invention are generally related to a method and apparatus for pumping solid-state lasers and amplifiers and in particular, to a method and apparatus for pumping solid-state lasers and amplifiers using Light Emitting Diode (LED) arrays.
Since the invention of the laser in 1961, the application of lasers outside of research has been strongly tied to development of pump sources. For example, Ti:sapphire lasers were originally pumped with Ar+-ion lasers, but these have been largely been replaced by frequency-doubled, diode-pumped Nd:vanadate lasers (Nd:YVO4). Arc-lamp and flashlamp-pumped Nd lasers have also been superseded by lasers pumped by high-power diode bars. These replacements have largely been on the merits of superior performance and reliability rather than cost. In many cases, the purchase and maintenance costs of the diode-pumped systems are larger than the technologies they replaced. It has long been a goal to directly pump Ti:sapphire with diode lasers, but there had been a lack of laser sources emitting in the pump 450-550 nm pump band with sufficient power. Although high-power laser diodes very near the peak absorption of Ti3+ at 500 nm are not yet available, the recent development of 445 nm diodes at high power (over 1 W) has opened up the possibility of directly diode-pumping Ti:sapphire oscillators. The commercial availability of these laser diodes has been driven by the market for display projectors. In the last few years, researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland demonstrated the first direct diode pumped continuous-wave (CW) Ti:sapphire laser oscillator. Subsequently, they demonstrated modelocking by use of intracavity prisms and a saturable Bragg reflector (SBR). Recently, the first Kerr-lens modelocked femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser that was directly diode-pumped was demonstrated.
The cost of advanced laser systems such as ultrafast amplifiers has a major impact on whether new applications can make it out of research and into industry and medicine. Another shift in laser technology can be possible if the advances in high-brightness, high-efficiency and inexpensive LED lighting can be leveraged for laser pumping. While laser diode pumping is well-established (at least for gain media such as Nd and Yb that can be pumped in the near infrared), the LED option is an alternative that has received much less attention. There was some early work on LED-pumped lasers, but the success of laser diode pumping has drawn the attention away from the use of LEDs. The primary challenge of LED pumping is that LED sources are close to Lambertian emitters, and it is relatively difficult to obtain a concentration of the pump light that will result in sufficient gain for an oscillator or amplifier. However, there are several reasons why LED pumping has the potential to make a dramatic impact on the applications of lasers in industry, medicine and research. LED efficiency and cost have dramatically improved recently, owing to the high worldwide demand for efficient lighting. LEDs can deliver high energy output in pulsed mode, and the visible wavelengths available spectrally match the absorption of several important gain media that are not easily pumped with laser diode.
LED-pumped laser systems are anticipated to be sold at significantly reduced cost and system complexity compared to laser systems pumped with laser diodes, arc lamps and flashlamps. Some efforts in LED-pumped lasers have been made, such as U.S. Pat. No. 7,522,651 to Luo (“Luo”). Luo requires spontaneous emission of photons as a result of a population inversion initiated by gain medium excitement with absorption-matching incoherent monochromatic sources such as arrays of LEDs. Luo is silent regarding the use of polarization incoherent light to pump a gain medium, a feature in some embodiments of the invention. Luo is incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Additional background on LED solid-state pumped lasers may be found in “Revisiting of LED pumped bulk laser-first demonstration of Nd-YVO4 LED pumped laser” by Barbet, A. et al, Optics Letters, Vol. 39, No. 23, Dec. 1, 2014 (“Barbet”), incorporated by reference in its entirety. Barbet is silent regarding the use of polarization incoherent light to pump a gain medium, a feature in some embodiments of the invention.
Further general background on LED solid-state pumped lasers may be found in US Statutory Invention Registration No. H2161 by Scheps, incorporated by reference in its entirety.
When pumping a gain medium that has an absorption that depends strongly on the polarization (such as Ti:sapphire and Nd:vanadate), if one does not use a linear polarized light, absorption is much less efficient for half of the pump power. In this disclosure, it is described that by using a semi-polar GaN crystal, e.g., in the LED, one can obtain a linearly polarized light. The prior art, e.g. Luo, does not disclose nor appreciate this because, inter alia, until recently the only means to obtain a polarized light was by placing a polarization filter in front of the LED (which results in a loss of half of the light). We also note that if unpolarized pump light is employed that is directional, for example from a laser diode coupled to a fiber, the transmitted pump light with the more transparent polarization can be reflected back into the crystal after rotating the polarization. This technique cannot be employed with diffusely directed LED light.
Additional information on generating linear polarization light from LEDs may be found in the following documents, each incorporated by reference in entirety: Zhao, Y. et al, “High optical polarization ratio from semipolar (2021) blue-green InGaN/GaN light-emitting diodes,” Applied Physics Letters, 99, 051109 (2011); Schubert, M., et al, “Linearly polarized emission from GaInN light-emitting diodes with polarization-enhancing reflector,” Optics Express, Vol. 15, No. 18, 2007; and Shakya, J. et al, “Polarization of III-nitride blue and ultraviolet light-emitting diodes,” Applied Physics Letters, 86, 091107 (2005).
By way of providing additional background, context, and to further satisfy the written description requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 112, the following references are incorporated by reference in their entireties: D. E. Spence, P. N. Kean, and W. Sibbett, “60-fsec pulse generation from a self-mode- locked Ti:sapphire laser,” Opt Lett, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 42-44, 1991; S. Nakamura, M. Senoh, S.-I. Nagahama, N. Iwasa, T. Matsushita, and T. Mukai, “Blue InGaN-based laser diodes with an emission wavelength of 450 nm,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 76, no. 1, pp. 22-24, 2000; A. R. Bellancourt, U. Mackens, H. Moench, and U. Weichmann, “Blue diode pumped solid-state lasers for digital projection,” Laser Phys., vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 643-648, Feb. 2010; P. W. Roth, A. J. Maclean, D. Burns, and A. J. Kemp, “Directly diode-laser-pumped Ti: sapphire laser,” Opt Lett, vol. 34, no. 21, pp. 3334-3336, 2009; P. W. Roth, A. J. Maclean, D. Burns, and A. J. Kemp, “Direct diode-laser pumping of a mode-locked Ti: sapphire laser,” Opt Lett, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 304-306, 2011; C. G. Durfee, T. Storz, J. Garlick, S. Hill, J. A. Squier, M. Kirchner, G. Taft, K. Shea, H. Kapteyn, and M. Murnane, “Direct diode-pumped Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti: sapphire laser,” Opt Express, vol. 20, no. 13, pp. 13677-13683, 2012; J. P. Budin, M. Neubauer, and M. Rondot, “Miniature Nd-pentaphosphate laser with bonded mirrors side pumped with low-current-density LED's,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 33, no. 4, p. 309, 1978; B. I. Denker, A. A. Izyneev, I. I. Kuratev, Y. V. Tsvetkov, and A. V. Shestakov, “Lasing in phosphate glasses with high neodymium ion concentrations under pumping with light-emitting diodes,” Soviet journal of quantum electronics, vol. 10, no. 9, p. 1167, 1980; G. I. Farmer and Y. C. Kiang, “Low-current-density LED-pumped Nd:YAG laser using a solid cylindrical reflector,” J. Appl. Phys., vol. 45, no. 3, p. 1356, 1974; M. Saruwatari, T. Kimura, T. Yamada, and J. Nakano, “LiNdP4O12 laser pumped with an AlxGa1-xAs electroluminescent diode,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 27, no. 12, p. 682, 1975; J. Stone, C. A. Burrus, A. G. Dentai, and B. I. Miller, “Nd:YAG single-crystal fiber laser: Room-temperature cw operation using a single LED as an end pump,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 29, no. 1, p. 37, 1976; F. K. Yam and Z. Hassan, “Innovative advances in LED technology,” Microelectronics Journal, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 129-137, Feb. 2005; R. Haitz, F. Kish, J. Tsao, and J. Nelson, “The case for a national research program on semiconductor lighting,” Optoelectronics Industry Development Association, 1999.
Also, the following references are incorporated by reference in their entireties: D. Zhu, J. Xu, A. N. Noemaun, J. K. Kim, E. F. Schubert, M. H. Crawford, and D. D. Koleske, “The origin of the high diode-ideality factors in GaInN/GaN multiple quantum well light-emitting diodes,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 94, no. 8, p. 081113, 2009; E. Kioupakis, P. Rinke, K. T. Delaney, and C. G. Van de Walle, “Indirect Auger recombination as a cause of efficiency droop in nitride light-emitting diodes,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 98, no. 16, p. 161107, 2011; D. S. Meyaard, G.-B. Lin, J. Cho, E. Fred Schubert, H. Shim, S.-H. Han, M.-H. Kim, C. Sone, and Y. Sun Kim, “Identifying the cause of the efficiency droop in GaInN light-emitting diodes by correlating the onset of high injection with the onset of the efficiency droop,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 102, no. 25, p. 251114, 2013; J. Iveland, L. Martinelli, J. Peretti, J. S. Speck, and C. Weisbuch, “Direct Measurement of Auger Electrons Emitted from a Semiconductor Light-Emitting Diode under Electrical Injection: Identification of the Dominant Mechanism for Efficiency Droop,” Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 110, no. 17, p. 177406, Apr. 2013; M. J. Cich, R. I. Aldaz, A. Chakraborty, A. David, M. J. Grundmann, A. Tyagi, M. Zhang, F. M. Steranka, and M. R. Krames, “Bulk GaN based violet light-emitting diodes with high efficiency at very high current density,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 101, no. 22, p. 223509, 2012; C.-C. Pan, S. Tanaka, F. Wu, Y. Zhao, J. S. Speck, S. Nakamura, S. P. DenBaars, and D. Feezell, “High-Power, Low-Efficiency-Droop Semipolar (2021) Single-Quantum-Well Blue Light-Emitting Diodes,” Appl. Phys. Express, vol. 5, no. 6, p. 062103, Jun. 2012; A. Pourhashemi, R. M. Farrell, M. T. Hardy, P. S. Hsu, K. M. Kelchner, J. S. Speck, S. P. DenBaars, and S. Nakamura, “Pulsed high-power AlGaN-cladding-free blue laser diodes on semipolar (2021) GaN substrates,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 103, no. 15, p. 151112, 2013; E. Matioli, S. Brinkley, K. M. Kelchner, Y.-L. Hu, S. Nakamura, S. DenBaars, J. Speck, and C. Weisbuch, “High-brightness polarized light-emitting diodes,” Light Sci Appl, vol. 1, no. 8, p. e22, Aug. 2012.
Also, the following references are incorporated by reference in their entireties: P. F. Moulton, “Spectroscopic and Laser Characteristics of Ti:Al2O3,” J Opt Soc Am B, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 125-133, 1986; M. Dymott and A. Ferguson, “Self-mode-locked diode-pumped Cr: LiSAF laser,” Opt Lett, vol. 19, no. 23, pp. 1988-1990, 1994; P. Wagenblast, R. Ell, U. Morgner, F. Grawert, and F. X. Kartner, “Diode-pumped 10-fs Cr3+:LiCAF laser,” Opt Lett, vol. 28, no. 18, pp. 1713-1715, 2003; U. Demirbas, M. Schmalz, B. Sumpf, G. Erbert, G. S. Petrich, L. A. Kolodziej ski, J. G. Fujimoto, F. X. Kärtner, and A. Leitenstorfer, “Femtosecond Cr: LiSAF and Cr: LiCAF lasers pumped by tapered diode lasers,” Opt Express, vol. 19, no. 21, pp. 20444-20461, 2011; C. Honninger, R. Paschotta, M. Graf, F. Morier-Genoud, G. Zhang, M. Moser, S. Biswal, J. Nees, A. Braun, and G. Mourou, “Ultrafast ytterbium-doped bulk lasers and laser amplifiers,” Appl Phys B, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 3-17, 1999; A. Müller, O. B. Jensen, A. Unterhuber, T. Le, A. Stingl, K. H. Hasler, B. Sumpf, G. Erbert, P. E. Andersen, and P. M. Petersen, “Frequency-doubled DBR-tapered diode laser for direct pumping of Ti: sapphire lasers generating sub-20 fs pulses,” Opt Express, vol. 19, no. 13, pp. 12156-12163, 2011; C. Wood, S. Backus, J. Squier, and C. Durfee, “Pumping of Ti:sapphire moves to the blue,” Laser Focus World, Sep. 2012; J. Kvapil, J. Kvapil, B. Perner, J. Kubelka, B. Mánek, and V. Kube{hacek over (c)}ek, “Laser properties of yag: Nd, Cr, Ce,” Czechoslovak journal of physics, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 581-588,1984; S. M. Kaczmarek, M. Kwany, A. O. Matkovskii, D. J.
Sugak, Z. Mierczyk, Z. Frukacz, and J. Kisielewski, “Effect of increase of Ce3+ ions content after gamma irradiation of Ce and Ce, Nd doped YAG single crystals,” Biuletyn WAT, vol. 8, p. 93, 1996; Y. Li, S. Zhou, H. Lin, X. Hou, and W. Li, “Optical Materials,” Opt Mater, vol. 32, no. 9, pp. 1223-1226, Jul. 2010; J. Walling, O. Peterson, H. Jenssen, R. Morris, and E. O′Dell, “Tunable alexandrite lasers,” Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of vol. 16, no. 12, pp. 1302-1315,1980; J. Walling, D. Heller, H. Samelson, D. Harter, J. Pete, and R. Morris, “Tunable alexandrite lasers: development and performance,” IEEE Journal of QuantumElectronics, vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 1568-1581, 1985.
Also, the following references are incorporated by reference in their entireties: P. Bado, M. Pessot, J. Squier, G. A. Mourou, and D. J. Harter, “Regenerative amplification in alexandrite of pulses from specialized oscillators,” Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 1167-1171, 1988; S. P. DenBaars, D. Feezell, K. Kelchner, S. Pimputkar, C.-C. Pan, C.-C. Yen, S. Tanaka, Y. Zhao, N. Pfaff, R. Farrell, M. Iza, S. Keller, U. Mishra, J. S. Speck, and S. Nakamura, “Development of gallium-nitride-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes for energy-efficient lighting and displays,” Acta Materialia, vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 945-951, Feb. 2013; C. Willert, S. Moessner, and J. Klinner, “Pulsed operation of high power light emitting diodes for flow velocimetry,” presented at the 8th International Symposium on Particle Image Velocimetry, 2009; D. S. Bethune, “Dye cell design for high-power low-divergence excimer-pumped dye lasers,” Applied Optics, vol. 20, no. 11, pp. 1897-1899, 1981; and G. Kuhnle, G. Marowsky, and G. A. Reider, “Laser amplification using axicon reflectors,” Applied Optics, vol. 27, no. 13, pp. 2666-2670, 1988.
To provide context to the present invention, a discussion of how absorbed light connects to the gain in a laser amplifier is provided. The small signal gain experienced by a pulse passing through an amplifying medium along the z-axis can be expressed as exp[gz], where the gain coefficient g can be expressed as g=Ninvσ21 where σ21 is the stimulated emission cross-section and Ninv=N2−(g2/g1)N1 is the effective inversion number density between levels 1 and 2, accounting for the degeneracies g1, g2 of those levels. Depending on the characteristics of the pump source and the method of delivery of light to the gain medium, the inversion density will depend on position. For simplicity, consider the case where the beam being amplified is collimated over its propagation through the gain medium. Here the net small signal gain for the beam can be obtained by integrating over the propagation length L,
G
0=exp[σ21∫Ninv(x,y,z)dz], where integral limits are from 0 to L.
For the collimated input beam, the gain is insensitive to the distribution of the inversion density along the beam, and the gain can be expressed in the convenient form
G
0=exp[Γstor/Γsat]
where σsat=hv21/σ21 is the saturation fluence of the medium and Γstar (x,y) is the stored energy fluence. The stored energy density is related to the intensity distribution of the pump, accounting for the divergence of the pump and its absorption by the gain medium. In the simple limit for a 4 level system where N1≈0 (fast depopulation of the lasing termination level) and the ground state is not depleted, and the pump duration is comparable to the upper state lifetime τ21, it can be shown that
N
inv (r)=I(r)ατ21 /hvP
where α is the absorption coefficient of the pump and hvP is the pump photon energy. Finally, the stored fluence can be expressed in terms of an arbitrary pump intensity distribution as:
Γstor (x, y)=ηqατ21∫I (r)dz,
where ηq=vL/vP is the so-called quantum defect and the integral limits are from 0 to L. For the case where the pump pulse duration τP is much less than the fluorescence time, we can approximately set τ21→τP in this expression.
This simple framework can be used to appreciate the challenges for optical pumping by various sources. One of the most important characteristics of an optical pump source is its divergence. A laser beam with a single lowest-order spatial mode is ideal for longitudinal pumping since it can be focused to a spot and maintain good overlap with the beam being amplified. High-power laser diodes and diode bars are typically single mode in the fast direction (perpendicular to the narrow direction of the emitting facet), but are highly multimode in the slow direction. While the imperfect focusing makes longitudinal pumping more challenging, beam shaping and coupling to multimode fibers are common techniques to effectively transfer power to the laser crystal. In contrast, the light emitted from a surface emitting LED is sufficiently non-directional that transverse pumping is the best solution for most gain media. The angular distribution from a surface-emitting LED can be approximated as a Lambertian radiator, with an angular dependence that follows cos θ, where θ is the angle from the surface normal. Photonic crystal structures can be used to decrease the angular range of emission [12] somewhat, but even with these structures, the emitted light cannot be concentrated over a substantial volume as a coherent laser beam can. Non-imaging optics can be employed to collect and transfer the light to a smaller spot. By the radiance theorem, this concentration of the local light intensity is accompanied by an increase in the divergence. Therefore, unless the gain medium has an extremely short absorption length, the stored fluence over the absorption distance will be very low. For the most part, the solid-state gain media considered here have absorption lengths that are greater than 2.5 mm, and we will be primarily concerned with transverse pumping.
With transverse pumping, the length of the gain medium in the seed beam direction can be extended to allow the use of a greater number of emitters. The length of the crystal can be limited by several factors such as cost and crystal growth limitations. For high-power pulsed applications, increasing the crystal length also results in higher nonlinear effects (B-integral). For ultrashort pulses, increased dispersion must be balanced in the stretching and compression scheme. The transverse dimensions of the crystal are also limited by considerations of pump uniformity and extraction efficiency.
While laser diode (LD) bars have some advantages over LEDs for optical pumping of lasers, there are a number of scenarios where LEDs have an advantage. In the following, two approaches are compared.
Spectral coupling efficiency. The narrow emitted spectrum for LD sources can be used to couple the pump much more effectively into the laser medium than arc lamps or flashlamps. This has greatly benefitted the development of many laser systems, especially Nd, Yb, Tm and Er, where there is a good match of the available LD wavelengths to absorption lines. Pumping on a narrow absorption line can lead to short absorption lengths, but also places tight tolerances on the emission wavelength of the LD source. Since the LD emission wavelength depends on the temperature, system cost is driven in part by maintaining the temperature within a narrow range. LEDs in contrast, are available with a wide range of output wavelengths from the near-UV to the near IR. The emission spectra are not as narrow as for LD sources (typically 20 nm), so broader absorption bands must be targeted. It is important to note that the wide wavelength range of LED sources in the visible and UV will allow pumping of important gain media for which high power LDs are expensive or are not available. These include the vibronic media such as Cr3+ lasers (alexandrite, Cr3+:LiSAF, Cr3+:LiSGaF, pump peaks at 420 nm and 590 nm) and notably Ti:sapphire (Ti3+, pump peak at 500 nm). Single-emitter laser diodes at 445 nm that are newly available with Watt-level output, but to date diode bars are not available.
LED architectures. The edge emitting architecture of laser diodes allows one beam direction to have good focusing properties, but it also introduces some complications. While it is possible to operate the LD bars in pulsed mode, the peak power out of the LD cannot be much higher than the maximum CW power, being limited by the peak intensity of the beam on the output facet. Cooling of a LD bar must be achieved by heat-sinking on a plane parallel to the emission direction. This makes closely-spaced arrangement of diode bars around the gain medium an engineering challenge. The surface-emitting LEDs are cooled on a surface opposing the emission direction. The broad area of emission results in damage mechanisms that are primarily thermal in nature.
LED efficiency. Intensive investment into research and development has resulted in a dramatic increase in efficiency along with a reduction in cost. See
Titanium(3+)-doped sapphire is an excellent and widely-used gain medium, with an active ion which has a large bandwidth in a host crystal that is hard and has high thermal conductivity. For oscillators, the high saturation intensity and short fluorescence time has led to the use of longitudinal laser pumping by a high-brightness lasers tightly focused to approximately 30 μm in the crystal. The low cost of direct diode pumping has led to the investigation of other ultrafast laser materials, such as Cr:LiSAF and Yb-doped materials. The commercially-available laser diodes at 445 nm have an emitter area of approximately 15 μm×1 μm. Although frequency-doubled diode lasers can be used to pump Ti:sapphire lasers, the simplicity, robustness and cost savings of direct diode pumping is attractive: 445 nm diodes can be less than $400 for a complete double laser package producing 2.2 W. Direct diode-pumped Ti:sapphire lasers have great promise to increase reliability and portability for a new generation of ultrafast laser systems. While direct LD pumping of Ti:sapphire oscillators represents a great advance, there is still a challenge of reducing the footprint and cost for pumping more energetic systems. The disclosure's focus on LED pumping stems in part from the high cost and poor reliability of pump sources for Ti(3+):sapphire amplifiers.
Ti(3+):sapphire is not the only gain medium that can benefit from powerful pump sources in the visible. Cerium(3+)-sensitized crystal Ce:Nd:YAG is a viable option. This gain medium has been known for some time. In this disclosure, the first lasing of this material by blue LEDs is achieved. Nd-based lasers have long been the workhorse of industrial and scientific lasers and there might seem to be little need for improvement. However, arc- and flash-lamp pumping remains extremely inefficient, at the 2% wall-plug efficiency level. CW and pulse diode-pumped systems perform better and are more efficient, but are even more expensive than lamp pumping. An LED-pumped system has the potential to be an order of magnitude less expensive than either type of system. Cerium has a very strong absorption band that overlaps well with 450 nm LEDs. There is a rapid, efficient, non-radiative energy transfer to the co-doped Nd ions.
A third example of a gain medium that can benefit from solid-state pumping is alexandrite. Alexandrite has sufficient gain bandwidth to support short pulses, but the advent of Ti:sapphire, with broader bandwidth and lower saturation fluence (higher gain), has relegated alexandrite to a small number of specialized commercial purposes such as skin treatments. However, given an inexpensive and efficient means of pumping, alexandrite could be important for short pulse amplification. The material has strong absorption bands in the blue and yellow, where there are now high LED sources available. Alexandrite has almost 10 times the fluorescence lifetime of Ti:sapphire, allowing for proportionately more energy storage.
It is well established that polarization fields across the quantum well active regions of III-N LEDs grown on the basal c-plane degrade carrier injection and radiative recombination rates, and that devices grown on nonpolar or semipolar planes perform better, particularly at high current density. This is shown in
Some solid state gain materials perform better at reduced temperature, which opens the possibility of using LEDs under cryogenic conditions. For example high thermal load leads to strong thermal lensing in laser crystals. Additionally, thermally induced stress leads to stress birefringence in isotropic materials such as YAG. For sapphire in particular, the thermal conductivity increases and the sensitivity to thermal change (dn/dt) decreases at cryogenic temperature, thereby dramatically reducing thermal distortions on the amplified beam. Radiative and nonradiative recombination, dopant ionization, carrier transport and injection efficiency are all temperature dependent. Theoretical calculations also predict some temperature dependence for Auger recombination.
In this disclosure, the limits of LED operation are pushed to scale the power of direct pumping of gain media. Among other things, an LED pumped Ce:Nd:YAG laser is disclosed. Also, aspects relevant to high-power laser pumping are disclosed, to include: the mechanisms of the observed efficiency drop at high current density, techniques for avoiding thermal damage, design and testing of approaches for optimizing the optical coupling of LED light to the gain media, and the demonstration of amplification or lasing in Ce:Nd:YAG, alexandrite and Ti:sapphire.
Some of the advantages of the LED pumped laser device and method include: (1) a significant reduction in cost and operational time compared to state of the art optically pumped laser heads; (2) a major reduction in power supplies and cooling system costs and operational time; (3) the ability to be used in continuous or variable repetition rate pulsed modes without changing the pump source; (4) the ability to be used both in the oscillator and amplifier stages; and (5) the flexibility to offer a wide range of high-power LED wavelengths, and therefore may be applied to a wide range of gain media. The device and method may also be used in high speed photography and high intensity industrial photon processing such as Rapid Thermal Annealing and medical photo therapy and photo drug.
A method and apparatus for pumping solid-state lasers and amplifiers is disclosed and in particular, a method and apparatus for pumping solid-state lasers and amplifiers using Light Emitting Diode (LED) arrays is disclosed.
In one embodiment, a solid-state laser device is provided which comprises: a gain medium; a plurality of LEDs in optical communication with the gain medium to excite the gain medium, the plurality of LEDs arranged in an LED array; a driving circuit to energize the LED array; and a cooler to reduce the temperature of the LED array, wherein the gain medium is pumped by the LED array to emit a laser light. In one embodiment, the active ions in the solid-state gain medium are selected from the group consisting of Ce(+3), Nd(+3), Ce(+3), Yb(3+), Ce(+3), Er(+3), Pr(+3), Ti(+3) (e.g. Ti:sapphire) and Cr(+3) (e.g. alexandrite, ruby, or Cr:LiCAF). In one embodiment, the cooler comprises a thermoelectric and microchannel cooler.
In another embodiment, an LED pumped laser system is disclosed, the system comprising: a solid-state gain medium wherein active ions in the gain medium are selected from the group consisting of Ce(+3), Nd(+3), Ce(+3), Yb(+3), Ce(+3), Er(+3), Pr(+3), Ti(+3) and Cr(+3); a plurality of LEDs arranged in a 2-dimensional planar LED array in optical communication with the gain medium to excite the gain medium; a driving circuit devoid of flash lamps to energize the LED array; a cooler to reduce the temperature of the LED array, the cooler comprising a thermoelectric cooler and a microchannel cooler; wherein the LEDs emit linearly polarized light; and wherein the gain medium is pumped by the LED array to emit a laser light.
In another embodiment, a method of generating laser light is disclosed, the method comprising: (1) providing a gain medium; arranging a plurality of LEDs in a 2-dimensional planar LED array in optical communication with the gain medium to excite the gain medium; (2) driving the LED array with a driving circuit to energize the LED array; (3) providing a cooler in communication with the LED array to cool the LED array; (4) emitting linearly polarized light by the plurality of LEDs; and (4) pumping the gain medium with the emitted linearly polarized light, wherein laser light is emitted.
The term “laser” and variations thereof, as used herein, refers to a device that emits light through the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation.
The term “laser diode”, “LD” and variations thereof, as used herein, refers to a laser electrically-pumped by a semiconductor diode.
The term “laser pumping” and variations thereof, as used herein, means the act of transferring energy into the gain medium of a laser.
The term “lase” and variations thereof means to give off or emit laser light.
The term “light emitting diode”, “light-emitting diode”, “LED” and variations thereof, as used herein, refers to a semiconductor diode that emits light.
The term “gain medium” and variations thereof, as used herein, means a source of optical gain as used in a laser.
The term “Ce” refers to the chemical element Cerium with atomic number 58.
The term “Er” refers to the chemical element Erbium with atomic number 68.
The term “Nd” refers to the chemical element Neodymium with atomic number 60.
The term “Si” refers to the chemical element Silicon with atomic number 14.
The term “Tm” refers to the chemical element Thulium with atomic number 69.
The term “Yb” refers to the chemical element Ytterbium with atomic number 70.
The term “GaN” refers to the chemical compound Gallium Nitride.
The terms “Alexandrite”, “Titanium:Sapphire”, and “Ti:Al2O3” refer to a laser gain medium of Titanium-doped Al2O3.
The terms “Nd:YAG”, “Nd:Yttrium Aluminium Garnet” and “Nd: Y3Al5O12 refer to a laser gain medium of Neodymium-doped Yttrium Aluminium Garnet.
The terms “Ti:Sapphire”, “Titanium:Sapphire”, and “Ti:Al2O3” refer to a laser gain medium of Titanium-doped Al2O3.
The terms “Ce:Nd:YAG”, “Ce:Nd:Yttrium Aluminium Garnet” and “Ce:Nd: Y3Al5O12 refer to a laser gain medium of co-doped, by Cerium(3+) and Neodymium(3+), Yttrium Aluminium Garnet.
The term “means” as used herein shall be given its broadest possible interpretation in accordance with 35 U.S.C., Section 112, Paragraph 6. Accordingly, a claim incorporating the term “means” shall cover all structures, materials, or acts set forth herein, and all of the equivalents thereof. Further, the structures, materials or acts and the equivalents thereof shall include all those described in the summary of the invention, brief description of the drawings, detailed description, abstract, and claims themselves. Accordingly, a claim incorporating the term “means” shall cover all structures, materials, or acts set forth herein, and all of the equivalents thereof. Further, the structures, materials or acts and the equivalents thereof shall include all those described in the summary of the invention, brief description of the drawings, detailed description, abstract, and claims themselves.
The term “computer-readable medium” as used herein refers to any tangible storage and/or transmission medium that participate in providing instructions to a processor for execution. Such a medium may take many forms, including but not limited to, non-volatile media, volatile media, and transmission media. Non-volatile media includes, for example, NVRAM, or magnetic or optical disks. Volatile media includes dynamic memory, such as main memory. Common forms of computer-readable media include, for example, a floppy disk, a flexible disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, or any other magnetic medium, magneto-optical medium, a CD-ROM, any other optical medium, punch cards, paper tape, any other physical medium with patterns of holes, a RAM, a PROM, and EPROM, a FLASH-EPROM, a solid state medium like a memory card, any other memory chip or cartridge, a carrier wave as described hereinafter, or any other medium from which a computer can read. A digital file attachment to e-mail or other self-contained information archive or set of archives is considered a distribution medium equivalent to a tangible storage medium. When the computer-readable media is configured as a database, it is to be understood that the database may be any type of database, such as relational, hierarchical, object-oriented, and/or the like. Accordingly, the disclosure is considered to include a tangible storage medium or distribution medium and prior art-recognized equivalents and successor media, in which the software implementations of the present disclosure are stored.
This Summary is neither intended nor should it be construed as being representative of the full extent and scope of the present disclosure. The present disclosure is set forth in various levels of detail in the Summary as well as in the attached drawings and the Detailed Description of the Invention, and no limitation as to the scope of the present disclosure is intended by either the inclusion or non-inclusion of elements, components, etc. in this Summary of the Invention. Additional aspects of the present disclosure will become more readily apparent from the Detailed Description, particularly when taken together with the drawings.
The above-described benefits, embodiments, and/or characterizations are not necessarily complete or exhaustive, and in particular, as to the patentable subject matter disclosed herein. Other benefits, embodiments, and/or characterizations of the present disclosure are possible utilizing, alone or in combination, as set forth above and/or described in the accompanying figures and/or in the description herein below. However, the Detailed Description of the Invention, the drawing figures, and the exemplary claim set forth herein, taken in conjunction with this Summary of the Invention, define the invention.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the general description of the invention given above, and the detailed description of the drawings given below, serve to explain the principals of this invention.
It should be understood that the drawings are not necessarily to scale. In certain instances, details that are not necessary for an understanding of the invention or that render other details difficult to perceive may have been omitted. It should be understood, of course, that the invention is not necessarily limited to the particular embodiments illustrated herein.
In one embodiment, the gain medium 140 is Ce(3+):Nd(3+):YAG, so as to include cerium(3+) ions as a sensitizer for pumping the neodymium(3+) ions, with absorption in the blue. The absorption by the cerium(3+) can be quite strong, and the non-radiative cooperative energy transfer to the Nd(3+) ions is fast and efficient. The relatively long (230 us) lifetime of the metastable state in Nd allows for energy accumulation and storage, while the moderate value for the saturation fluence (˜0.3 J/cm2) results in reasonable gain without requiring large stored energy density. To demonstrate the feasibility of using LED arrays to transversely pump lasers, a Ce(3+):Nd(3+):YAG crystal was pumped with 450 nm LEDs. This arrangement shows that the LEDs can be driven with sufficiently high output to achieve lasing.
Generally, the rare earths included in the gain medium are in the 3+valance state.
In one embodiment, the LED arrays 112 used are commercially-available, produced by Shenzhen Hanhua Opto Co. (HH-100WB3HB1010-M) operating at 450 nm and rated for 45% EQE with a 45W output with 3.4 A delivered to the array. The array 112 consists of 1.1 mm square emitters arranged in a 24×24 mm array. Electrically, the LED elements 110 are ten (10) columns in parallel, each column consisting of 10 LEDs in series. Therefore the rated operating current density is approximately 30 A/cm2.
In one embodiment, the driving circuit 120 was developed to deliver square current pulses to the array 112. Since driving the array 112 at high current leads to a strong thermal load, a thermoelectric (TE) cooler 130 was added to the back of the array 112. The TE module was water-cooled on the warm side. To reduce the thermal load further, the driving circuit 120 pulsed at 200 μs and at a low duty cycle, typically 1-10%. An integrating sphere with a calibrated Si photodiode power meter was used to measure the average optical power as the pulse current was varied. The current was measured by recording the voltage across a 0.01 Ω current-limiting resistor in series with the array. The plot shows that the LED array operates at close to the rated 45% EQE but at higher currents the yield droops. See
For this embodiment of the array 112, increasing the current density by a factor of about 17× drops the efficiency to 62% of its initial value. Even with the drop in EQE at high current density, the useful output energy is increased by over 10 times by using pulsed operation (46 mJ). Extrapolating to a higher current density of 1000 A/cm2, the EQE for this array would drop to around 14.5%. At this high current density the drop in efficiency would approximately balance the increased current and the total useful energy output would not be significantly higher. Semipolar LEDs have demonstrated EQE up to 50% for current densities of 1000 A/cm2. This would represent about 162 mJ of useful energy from this array.
In one embodiment, two arrays 112 are placed at a distance of approximately 4 mm from the 3 mm×50 mm rod on opposing sides. A semi-confocal cavity with a high reflector of 500 mm radius and a flat output coupler (5% transmission) are placed on either side of the rod. The rod was supported by holes in an enclosing aluminum chamber, but was uncooled. An alignment laser was used to verify the alignment of the rod and mirrors. Lasing action was observed with a photodiode (See
These experiments demonstrate the feasibility of using LED arrays to pump solid state lasers. In another embodiment, direct LED pumping of Ti(3+):sapphire lasers and amplifiers is disclosed.
The majority of the testing of LEDs has been under high-current continuous operation. The transient behavior of the LEDs is particularly important for operation for laser pumping. Because the efficiency drops at high current, driving with an approximately rectangular current pulse allows for a greater output energy than, for example, the critically-damped current pulse that is produced by a pulse forming network that drives a flashlamp. In one embodiment, individual LED emitters are mounted into custom arrays, comprising series and parallel operations.
Extracting heat from the LEDs is critical for high repetition rate operation. For example, consider an LED with an EQE of 45% operated at a current density of 1000 A/cm2. With a bandgap of 2.75 eV, and a 40% duty cycle the nominal heat load directly at the LED will be 660 W/cm2. This is in the range of heat load that may be addressed with microchannel/microfluiding cooling methods. In one embodiment, liquid and 2-phase microchannel cooling techniques are used to manage the heat load. The transient electrical and optical measurements help indicate whether rapid heating during the pulse contributes to the droop in the EQE. A thermal infrared camera may be used to assist in locating local hot spots. A design challenge for laser systems pumped with laser diode bars is that because they use edge emission, the microchannel cooling direction must be oriented perpendicular to the output direction of the pump light. For LEDs, the emission from the surface allows heat extraction around the periphery, which in turn allows for a higher packing density. The current arrays in one embodiment have an element size of 1.1 mm square, and are mounted with a 21% fill factor. In another embodiment, interconnects are modified to increase the fill factor by at least a factor of 2.
For pumping gain media with a short lifetime, the thermal limitations may be pushed into a different regime. Willert and co-workers explored the operation of LEDs with 1 us duration pulses with a 1% duty cycle. They tested the light output as the peak current was varied up to current densities of 1300 A/cm2. Red LEDs from Philips showed efficiency droop, but there was no sign of damage even at 2200 A/cm2. The maximum peak current was a factor of over 30 times the rated current, indicating that there is substantial room for working with high peak current if the average current is kept to within the rated value. The limits of high peak power operation is a function of the pulse duration and temperature. Operating at high peak current during a 3 us duration is critical for the success of LED pumping of Ti:sapphire.
Optical design: coupling of LED light to the gain media.
While LEDs can be efficient for optical emission and can support high current density, the diffuse output of the LEDs presents a challenge for getting this light into the gain medium. The system must not only couple the optical power into the crystal, it also must provide a means for cooling both the crystal and the LEDs.
Optical configurations for LED pumping.
The broad angular emission from the LEDs must be managed.
Two more rod-based pumping schemes that borrow from dye laser amplifier systems are illustrated in
A third set of pumping schemes is illustrated in
To analyze these pumping schemes, one may make use of the Zemax ray-tracing package, which can perform sequential and non-sequential tracing with optimization. Existing codes compute the saturated energy extraction for cylindrically symmetric pump and amplified beam distributions. A more general code allows for arbitrary 3D stored energy distributions, and other shapes of input laser beams. The gain modeling may be coupled with the propagation of the seed laser beam in the amplifier or oscillator resonator system, to account for gain guiding and thermal lensing effects on the amplified beam. The Comsol Multiphysics finite-element program may be used to assist in the modeling of the thermal loading of the crystal, as well as for the microchannel cooling designs. See
LEDs have a great potential for high energy output considering the cost that will continue to be driven lower by the immense market for efficient lighting. Embodiments of the invention use various gain media, and may be evaluated via the data with respect to LED operation at high current and short pulses. Seed lasers may be used to measure small signal gain, and either simple lasers (for the Ce:Nd:YAG crystal) or amplifiers designed and tested to evaluate the capabilities for energy extraction.
The co-doped gain material in a valance +3 state has a large absorption coefficient (>3/cm) for pump light at 445 nm, enabling relatively small rod diameters and higher gains. Note that this co-doped combination is not limited to the host crystal YAG; other host media are, including but not limited to, vanadate (YVO4), YLF (yttrium aluminum fluoride), and various formulations of glass. In one embodiment, a single 1.2 mm2 area LED with 50% EQE at 1000 A/cm2, the energy that can be emitted during the 230 μs lifetime of the Nd excited state is approximately 3.7 mJ. Consider a close-coupling geometry using a rod 3 mm in diameter and an array surrounding the rod on a 5 mm diameter circle, using arrays with an element size of 1.1 mm square mounted with a 21% fill factor. The number of LED elements would be approximately 100, delivering a total energy per pulse of 366 mJ. With an estimated pump transfer efficiency of 50%, 50% efficiency for extracting the stored energy and accounting for the Stokes shift (445/1064=0.42), the estimated output energy would be approximately 38 mJ. The estimated small-signal gain under these conditions would be 44/pass. Since this is likely too large for hold-off by a Q-switch, the same pump energy deposited into a larger diameter may be used. With sufficient cooling (the LEDs can be operated at high duty cycle) and a Q-switched and intracavity- doubled laser built around a pump head of this type would be very competitive with existing commercial lamp- and CW diode-pumped lasers (e.g. Quantronix, Photonics Industries, Coherent).
Cerium 3+ ions can also be co-doped with ytterbium and erbium, in YAG or other host media as noted above. Yb has its primary lasing band at approximately 1030 nm and Er lases near 1550 nm. Both gain media have gain over a sufficient bandwidth to support lasing and amplification of ultrashort pulses in the 100-200 fs duration range. The distinctive advantage of these two gain media is that the excitation of the Ce ions by the blue pump light is sufficiently high to simultaneously excite two neighboring gain atoms (Yb or Er). This process is known as upconversion and has been considered for solar applications. In the context of laser pumping, the capability of obtaining two excited atoms for one pump photon dramatically increases the gain and efficiency of the system. Yb and Er have long fluorescence lifetimes (approximately 2 ms and 9 ms, respectively), so they can effectively store pump energy, increasing the gain along with the output energy. The doping concentrations can be much higher than for Nd systems, which are more affected by quenching of the excited state with concentrations greater than 1%.
This crystal, which can support the amplification of broadband pulses has historically been superseded by Ti(3+):sapphire, which has a broader bandwidth and a lower saturation fluence. Nevertheless, along the b-axis, the crystal can amplify over the 710-800 nm range. The absorption in this biaxial crystal depends strongly on the crystal axis (See
Alexandrite has a relatively long fluorescence time (270 μs), approximately 85× that of Ti:sapphire. The large saturation fluence for the broadband transition (20 J/cm2) is close to or beyond the damage limit for pulsed operation (especially for stretched pulses <1 ns). Therefore careful amplifier design is necessary to obtain good energy extraction. With a 6.25 mm diameter by 100 mm long rod, a dense array with a 50% fill factor and 50% optical coupling efficiency can store up to 1.1 J of energy. Owing to the large saturation fluence, the small signal single-pass gain would be approximately 1.2 per pass. While this gain is low, it is sufficient for regenerative amplification which would be able to efficiently extract the stored energy. The gain for alexandrite increases when it is operated at elevated temperature. The alexandrite gain module uses seed pulses from a Ti(3+):sapphire oscillator.
Pr 3+ ions are well-suited to pumping by blue pump sources (see
The absorption spectrum of Ti(3+):sapphire is shown in
In one embodiment, LEDs are operated at a current density of 5000 A/cm2 for a 3 μs duration and 3 kHz repetition rate. With a 5 mm square rod, 50 mm in length, pumped on 3 sides (a combination of both schemes shown in
In one embodiment, performance of the LED-pumped laser device is increased by operation at cryogenic temperatures. In one embodiment, Cree Direct-Attach DA1000 LEDs, which use a bondpad-down architecture to mitigate resistance at the metallization attachment to the LED, are used. In another embodiment, new generation nanowire LEDs, such as those made by the Swedish company Glo, are used. Such nanowire LEDs are highly efficient because of the absence of impurities in the nanowires.
In one embodiment, a cryogenically-cooled amplifier module in which both the LED arrays and Ti(+3):sapphire crystal are operated near liquid nitrogen temperature is employed. This amplifier uses seed pulses from an existing kHz repetition rate ultrafast Ti:sapphire system.
In one embodiment, the LED-pumped laser device employs other gain media known to those skilled in the art, comprising Nd:Cr:GSGG, Nd:YVO4, Nd:GdVO4, Nd:KGW, Cr:Sapphire (a.k.a “Ruby”), Cr:LiSAF, Cr:YAG, Cr:Forsterite, Er:YLF, and Nd:glass, as well as other solid state materials that exhibit a spontaneous emission of photons as a result of a population inversion initiated by gain medium excitement with absorption-matching incoherent monochromatic sources such as arrays of LEDs.
A purpose of the invention is to replace the conventional flash lamp or flash lamps with LED's and LED arrays. Standard flash lamp drivers use a combination of Resistance (R), Inductance (L), and Capacitance (C) to control the pulse current to the flash lamp. One skilled in the art understands that with flash lamp technology, one has to be careful in applying high current suddenly to the flash lamp. If the impulse current is too large or too fast the flash lamp may explode or reduce the flash lamp life. Because the flash lamp is based on a gaseous plasma, one cannot get a fast rise time of light without special flash lamp designs and circuitry, thereby significantly increasing the system cost.
In the invention, the high intensity flash lamps are replaced with very high intensity LEDs that are being driven by a programmable pulse current generator.
In the prior art, such as U.S. Par. No. 7,522,651 to Luo, conventional LEDs and electrical drives are employed. For example, typically linear arrays of 1×n LEDs are used, resulting in optical droop increasing as the current is increased (See
In contrast, the invention provides a superior way of pumping by eliminating the optical droop. This entails making the LED array n×m or a 2-dimensional array.
The conventional prior art does not address pumping at various vibronic gain crystals; the prior art does not realize that the vibronic gain crystals are polarization sensitive. Therefore, if one pumps with the current flash lamp or current LEDs, the incoherent pump light is unpolarized and 50% of the light is not being used as for pumping. In contrast, the invention utilizes high power LEDs that are linearly polarized, which, by generating linear polarized light from the LED's themselves, all or most of the LED pump light is available to excite the vibronic gain crystals, such as Ti:Sapphire.
In one embodiment, a novel glass material is used in the device 100. The glass material eliminates or mitigates polarization issues and also solves the thermo-mechanical issues that have plagued glass lasers from operating at high rep rates. The glass is doped with Ti(III)(+3) ions and has a longer lifetime than Ti(III):Sapphire and almost twice the emission cross section. The lifetime increases from 3.6 microseconds in Sapphire to 170 microseconds in glass at 300K and improves further, at 77K liquid nitrogen temperatures, to 2 milliseconds. This is very important because it reduces the pump energy requirements by almost two orders at room temperature and 3 to 4 orders at liquid nitrogen temperature. The emission wavelength shifts blue-wards by about 190 nm so as to lase at 600 nm-800 nm instead of the 800 nm-1000 nm. Furthermore, the absorption in the blue is near UV, thus improved pumping is achieved. Also, because of the glass containment, no polarization sensitivity is present and thermo-mechanical properties much like sapphire are achieved, thereby allowing running at high energy high rep rates that may be tunable to allow generation of ultra short laser pulses.
It should, however, be appreciated that the present disclosure may be practiced in a variety of ways beyond the specific detail set forth herein. Furthermore, while the exemplary aspects, embodiments, options, and/or configurations illustrated herein show the various components of the system collocated, certain components of the system can be located remotely, at distant portions of a distributed network, such as a LAN and/or the Internet, or within a dedicated system. Thus, it should be appreciated, that the components of the system can be combined in to one or more devices, such as a Personal Computer (PC), laptop, netbook, smart phone, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), tablet, etc., or collocated on a particular node of a distributed network, such as an analog and/or digital telecommunications network, a packet-switch network, or a circuit-switched network. It will be appreciated from the preceding description, and for reasons of computational efficiency, that the components of the system can be arranged at any location within a distributed network of components without affecting the operation of the system. For example, the various components can be located in a switch such as a PBX and media server, gateway, in one or more communications devices, at one or more users' premises, or some combination thereof. Similarly, one or more functional portions of the system could be distributed between a telecommunications device(s) and an associated computing device.
Furthermore, it should be appreciated that the various links connecting the elements can be wired or wireless links, or any combination thereof, or any other known or later developed element(s) that is capable of supplying and/or communicating data to and from the connected elements. These wired or wireless links can also be secure links and may be capable of communicating encrypted information. Transmission media used as links, for example, can be any suitable carrier for electrical signals, including coaxial cables, copper wire and fiber optics, and may take the form of acoustic or light waves, such as those generated during radio-wave and infra-red data communications.
Optionally, the systems and methods of this disclosure can be implemented in conjunction with a special purpose computer, a programmed microprocessor or microcontroller and peripheral integrated circuit element(s), an ASIC or other integrated circuit, a digital signal processor, a hard-wired electronic or logic circuit such as discrete element circuit, a programmable logic device or gate array such as PLD, PLA, FPGA, PAL, special purpose computer, any comparable means, or the like. In general, any device(s) or means capable of implementing the methodology illustrated herein can be used to implement the various aspects of this disclosure. Exemplary hardware that can be used for the disclosed embodiments, configurations and aspects includes computers, handheld devices, telephones (e.g., cellular, Internet enabled, digital, analog, hybrids, and others), and other hardware known in the art. Some of these devices include processors (e.g., a single or multiple microprocessors), memory, nonvolatile storage, input devices, and output devices. Furthermore, alternative software implementations including, but not limited to, distributed processing or component/object distributed processing, parallel processing, or virtual machine processing can also be constructed to implement the methods described herein.
In yet another embodiment, the disclosed methods may be readily implemented in conjunction with software using object or object-oriented software development environments that provide portable source code that can be used on a variety of computer or workstation platforms. Alternatively, the disclosed system may be implemented partially or fully in hardware using standard logic circuits or VLSI design. Whether software or hardware is used to implement the systems in accordance with this disclosure is dependent on the speed and/or efficiency requirements of the system, the particular function, and the particular software or hardware systems or microprocessor or microcomputer systems being utilized.
In yet another embodiment, the disclosed methods may be partially implemented in software that can be stored on a storage medium, executed on programmed general-purpose computer with the cooperation of a controller and memory, a special purpose computer, a microprocessor, or the like. In these instances, the systems and methods of this disclosure can be implemented as program embedded on personal computer such as an applet, JAVA® or CGI script, as a resource residing on a server or computer workstation, as a routine embedded in a dedicated measurement system, system component, or the like. The system can also be implemented by physically incorporating the system and/or method into a software and/or hardware system.
Although the present disclosure describes components and functions implemented in the aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations with reference to particular standards and protocols, the aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations are not limited to such standards and protocols. Other similar standards and protocols not mentioned herein are in existence and are considered to be included in the present disclosure. Moreover, the standards and protocols mentioned herein and other similar standards and protocols not mentioned herein are periodically superseded by faster or more effective equivalents having essentially the same functions. Such replacement standards and protocols having the same functions are considered equivalents included in the present disclosure.
The present disclosure, in various aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations, includes components, methods, processes, systems and/or apparatus substantially as depicted and described herein, including various aspects, embodiments, configurations embodiments, sub-combinations, and/or subsets thereof. Those of skill in the art will understand how to make and use the disclosed aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations after understanding the present disclosure. The present disclosure, in various aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations, includes providing devices and processes in the absence of items not depicted and/or described herein or in various aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations hereof, including in the absence of such items as may have been used in previous devices or processes, e.g., for improving performance, achieving ease and\or reducing cost of implementation.
The foregoing discussion has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. The foregoing is not intended to limit the disclosure to the form or forms disclosed herein. In the foregoing Detailed Description for example, various features of the disclosure are grouped together in one or more aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure. The features of the aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations of the disclosure may be combined in alternate aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations other than those discussed above. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claims require more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive aspects lie in less than all features of a single foregoing disclosed aspect, embodiment, and/or configuration. Thus, the following claims are hereby incorporated into this Detailed Description, with each claim standing on its own as a separate preferred embodiment of the disclosure.
Moreover, though the description has included description of one or more aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations and certain variations and modifications, other variations, combinations, and modifications are within the scope of the disclosure, e.g., as may be within the skill and knowledge of those in the art, after understanding the present disclosure. It is intended to obtain rights which include alternative aspects, embodiments, and/or configurations to the extent permitted, including alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges or steps to those claimed, whether or not such alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges or steps are disclosed herein, and without intending to publicly dedicate any patentable subject matter. Examples of the processors as described herein may include, but are not limited to, at least one of Qualcomm® Snapdragon® 800 and 801, Qualcomm® Snapdragon® 610 and 615 with 4G LTE Integration and 64-bit computing, Apple® A7 processor with 64-bit architecture, Apple® M7 motion coprocessors, Samsung® Exynos® series, the Intel® Core™ family of processors, the Intel® Xeon® family of processors, the Intel® Atom™ family of processors, the Intel Itanium® family of processors, Intel® Core® i5-4670K and i7-4770K 22 nm Haswell, Intel® Core® i5-3570K 22 nm Ivy Bridge, the AMD® FX™ family of processors, AMD® FX-4300, FX-6300, and FX-8350 32 nm Vishera, AMD® Kaveri processors, Texas Instruments® Jacinto C6000™ automotive infotainment processors, Texas Instruments® OMAP™ automotive-grade mobile processors, ARM® Cortex™-M processors, ARM® Cortex-A and ARM926EJ-S™ processors, other industry-equivalent processors, and may perform computational functions using any known or future-developed standard, instruction set, libraries, and/or architecture.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/980,904 entitled “LED Pumped Lasers and Amplifiers” filed on Apr. 17, 2014, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61980904 | Apr 2014 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 14689753 | Apr 2015 | US |
| Child | 15424374 | US |
