Design and Simulation of a Highly Discriminant Laser Array Waveguide

The laser array waveguide designed and simulated in this thesis is highly mode discriminant and able to take advantage of spatially dispersive high-power pumping sources, such as, semiconductor laser diode arrays. The waveguide measures 5cm x 0.5cm and consists of an array of five 4Am x 4Am single mode Nd +3 doped glass lasers embedded in double cladding to improve total pumping efficiency. The gain profile of the array is designed so that the device lases only in the fundamental supermode; regardless of the mode of the pump source or of minor deviations from exact parallelism at the end faces. A simulation of the performance of the device was conducted with a the Beam-Propagation Method. Results of the simulation indicated that a coherent phase-locked beam is always produced from this laser waveguide array. Thesis Supervisor: Hermann A. Haus Title: MIT Professor Thesis Supervisor: Karl M. Kissa Title: Technical Supervisor, Draper Laboratory