A 23-watt single-frequency vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser

We report on a single-frequency semiconductor disk laser which generates 23.6 W output power in continuous wave operation, at a wavelength of 1013 nm. The high output power is a result of optimizing the chip design, thermal management and the cavity configuration. By applying passive stabilization techniques, the free-running linewidth is measured to be 407 kHz for a sampling time of 1 ms, while undercutting 100 kHz in the microsecond domain.