Polarization measurement of 2.1μm high power GaSb-based lasers

An experimental investigation for the polarization analysis of the high power GaSb-based semiconductor laser diodes emitting at 2.1μm in terms of measuring Stokes parameters has been exploited and adopted, which gives further insight into understanding, manipulating and applying the polarization properties of the laser diode. Results of output performance and polarization behavior of the laser are presented in the paper. The average linear polarization of the laser diode reaches 97.72% with output power exceeding 1W at 3.5A under CW operation at 20℃, which demonstrates the dominant position of linear polarization light of the output beam. Highly linear-polarized properties could not only enhance the performance of high power GaSb-based laser diodes in traditional applications in laser processing and beam combing, but also open new application fields such as parametric convention and coherent detection.