VIDEO: Toptica’s yellow laser -- Innovation Award Honorable Mention

San Jose, CA--At CLEO 2010, Laser Focus World interviewed Toptica Photonics AG (Munich, Germany), one of three companies receiving a 2010 CLEO/Laser Focus World Innovation Award Honorable Mention, about their "High-Power Tunable Laser Source for Sodium Spectroscopy and Other Applications." Their source is a tunable, narrow-linewidth, high-power (up to 30 W), 589 nm yellow laser for guide star, spectroscopy, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), phototherapy, and other visible and near-infrared applications.

The master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) configuration uses second-harmonic generation to convert a fiber-amplified 1178 nm diode laser seed wavelength to a stable 589 nm output with a diffraction-limited beam profile and better than 400:1 polarization extinction ratio. Its << 1 MHz spectral linewidth with 20 GHz mode-hop-free tuning range from 2, 5, and 10 W output power models is desirable for demanding applications in atomic and atmospheric physics. --Posted by Gail Overton; [email protected]; www.laserfocusworld.com