Light-emitting diode pumped luminescent concentrators: a new opportunity for low-cost solid-state lasers

Adrien Barbet (1) , Amandine Paul (2) , Thomas Gallinelli (3) , François Balembois (1) , Jean-Philippe Blanchot (2) , Sébastien Forget (3) , Sébastien Chénais (3) , Frédéric Druon (1) , Patrick Georges (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry / Lasers
2 Effilux
3 LPL - Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers

High-power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) today are twice as powerful as four years ago while meantime their price has been divided by 4 making them promising sources for laser pumping. However, their irradiance still falls short by one order of magnitude of what is needed to efficiently pump solid-state lasers. We demonstrate that an LED-pumped Ce:YAG luminescent concentrator (LC) can increase the irradiance of blue LEDs by a factor of 10, with an optical efficiency of 25%, making them much more suitable to pump solid-state lasers. In our demonstration , we used 100 Hz pulsed LEDs emitting 190 W∕cm 2 at 430 nm to illuminate a Ce:YAG LC, leading to an output irra-diance of 1830 W∕cm 2. The LC is used to pump a Nd:YVO 4 laser producing 360 μJ at 1064 nm, corresponding to an optical efficiency of 2.2% with respect to the LC. LED-pumped lumi-nescent concentrators pave the way for high-power, low-cost, solid-state lasers.

Mots clés: neodymium; solid-state

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]; Optique / photonique

Adrien Barbet, Amandine Paul, Thomas Gallinelli, François Balembois, Jean-Philippe Blanchot, et al.. Light-emitting diode pumped luminescent concentrators: a new opportunity for low-cost solid-state lasers. Optica, 2016, 3 (5), pp.465. ⟨10.1364/OPTICA.3.000465⟩. ⟨hal-01317116⟩