The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 10, 1996
Filed:
Jun. 07, 1995
George J Dixon, Indian Harbor Beach, FL (US);
Amoco Corporation, Chicago, IL (US);
Abstract
A laser is disclosed whose resonant cavity includes a back facet of a semiconductor gain element as one mirror and a passive resonator as part of a second mirror. Appropriate optics are provided for a round-trip path within the resonant cavity that avoids double-passing the passive resonator so that intracavity losses are reduced and more power is fed back to the gain element, which is the active medium of the laser. By ensuring a high percentage feedback of the radiation to the semiconductor gain element, amplitude stable operation can be achieved while locking the frequency of the gain element to the passive resonator. By providing both frequency and amplitude stable operation, fluctuation of the circulating power in the passive resonator is minimized and, therefore, can be usefully employed for many applications. For example, non-linear crystals of well-known types can be placed within the passive resonator in order to achieve highly efficient second harmonic generation in a power regime and with frequency and amplitude stability that was heretofore unobtainable.