Laser diode emitters with optical pulse duration less than 10 ns

Recently, interest in high-power pulsed semiconductor lasers has been growing. This is explained by their high efficiency, as well as wide possibilities of practical application of these light sources, in particular, for data transmission in open space, metrology, machine vision systems (LiDAR), etc. Typically, laser pulse generators include a semiconductor laser and an external source of pulsed pump current. This approach has a number of disadvantages associated with the need to match the semiconductor laser with the pump source, the presence of parasitic connections that appear when generating high-power current pulses, reducing the overall energy efficiency and speed of the system. In addition, the use of external sources does not always allow realizing the advantage of semiconductor lasers associated with small dimensions. The task of implementing pulsed current pumping becomes especially difficult when building systems that include hundreds and thousands of single emitters, both high-power and low-power. Here, in addition to the requirements for the power part of the source, the question arises about the energy efficiency of the generated control signals for such a system. The most promising solution is the use of devices that combine the functions of pulse sources with small-signal control and laser emitters. The integration of a powerful high-speed key with an effective laser heterostructure has made it possible to demonstrate the possibility of generating optical pulses with a duration of less than 10 ns.