Patent ID: 11916351
Assignee: ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS ON BEHALF OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Field: Optics (Instruments)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 9:
10. A system for determining a single-frequency operating current of a diode laser, comprising:
the diode laser;
a processor; and
a memory comprising instructions stored thereupon, wherein the instructions upon execution by the processor cause the processor to:
provide one or more commands to allow an operational current of the diode laser to ramp up for a first predetermined number of steps, and receive current values indicative of optical power within the laser diode for each of the first predetermined number of steps;
provide one or more commands to allow an operational current of the diode laser to ramp down for a second predetermined number of steps, and receive current values indicative of optical power within the laser diode for each of the second predetermined number of steps;
identify current values at which a mode hop or a multimode operation is likely to occur using the measured data obtained from the received current values for the first and the second predetermined number steps; and
determine a contiguous range of operating currents that is devoid of identified likely mode hops or multimode regions of operation for use as the operating current range of the diode laser having a single-frequency output, wherein the multimode operation is identified as a region having a negative slope followed by a region having substantially flat values for the current values indicative of the optical power as a function of the ramped up operating currents of the diode laser.