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:
Jun. 19, 2001
Filed:
May. 03, 1999
Andrew Merriam, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Guang-Yu Yin, Mountian View, CA (US);
The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A self-seeding laser comprises a slave oscillator cavity coupled to a Littman cavity that operates in a single longitudinal mode. The slave oscillator cavity comprises the following elements positioned in sequential order to provide a first beam path: an end mirror, a gain medium, a grating having a groove spacing, and an output mirror. The first beam path has an angle of incidence upon the grating, and light traveling along the first beam path is zeroth-order diffracted by the grating. A tuning mirror faces the grating, for reflecting light diffracted away from the first beam path by the grating. The tuning mirror establishes the Littman cavity. The gain medium is pumped by a pulsed pump beam. The pump beam activates a pump region within the gain medium, the pump region having a radius. The Littman cavity operates in the single longitudinal mode because the angle of incidence, the groove spacing, and the radius are adjusted so that an adjacent mode walk-off time of the Littman cavity is less than a mode build-up time of the Littman cavity. A gain in the Littman cavity is initially greater than a gain in the slave oscillator cavity; the laser is thereby self-seeded in the single longitudinal mode.