Hamamatsu Photonics has established proprietary technology that vastly improves the manufacturing precision of semiconductor laser modules or laser diode (LD) modules. This in-house technology has led to the successful development of a new LD module with a power density of 23 kW/cm2. This is about four times greater than the company's current LD modules and the world's highest level among light sources for pumping lasers in laser fusion applications.
Using these newly developed LD modules as light sources for pumping the laser medium will achieve laser power in the 1 kilojoule (kJ) class, an important milestone in making laser fusion practical. This will likelyExternal view of newly developed LD module. Source: Hamamatsu Photonics accelerate laser fusion research being conducted around the world. By applying the LD module manufacturing technology established by Hamamatsu, researchers can now design and develop smaller and more compact LD modules for solid-state laser pumping. In other words, it is possible to achieve the same optical output as currently available commercial LD modules, with a significantly smaller size.
Research results on this new LD module were presented at the special symposium in the “IEEE Photonics Conference“ entitled “A Technology Roadmap for High Power Diode Laser Pumps for Large Laser Facilities: From Secondary Source Generation to Fusion.” This conference was held in Rome, Italy, from November 10 to November 14, 2024.