Freedom Photonics demos 1550 nm semiconductor laser amplifier

Freedom Photonics demonstrated over 5.0 Watts of continuous wave optical power from a 1550 nm diode laser amplifier with nearly diffraction-limited beam quality. This result doubles the previous record reported just three months ago. 

“This achievement is a testament to the inherent scalability of our aura product line and demonstrates that this is just the beginning of a product life cycle that will see continuous improvements for years to come,” noted Dr. Paul Leisher, VP of Research at Freedom Photonics.

The aura product line is intended to address applications such as free space optical communications, sensing, and LIDAR by enabling watt-level direct use output from a semiconductor chip source. 

Freedom Photonics, which is based in Santa Barbara, California, cites an order-of-magnitude improvement in cost, size, and efficiency through the elimination of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) commonly employed to boost optical signals to the watt-level regime. Its aura technology has also recently been extended to the 1300-1400 nm wavelength range with the demonstration of over 3.0 Watts of diffraction-limited optical output power.

https://freedomphotonics.com