Toptica Photonics AG - PVLS-Series

The PVLS-Series is especially designed for optical data storage and image/plate setting applications, where synchronous or asynchronous data streams need to be transferred to a laser diode and where at the same time diffraction limited performance is required for the best possible focus.

In the optical data storage industry as well as in the printing industry, the new violet/blue laser diodes (390 to 445nm) represent an important breakthrough for the next stages of these technologies. Whilst with data storage the requirement for greater storage capacity on optical disks (e.g. blue DVD, digital video recording DVR) motivates the need for violet laser sources, the printing industry with its computer-to-plate technology (CtP) is looking for higher speed and cheaper plates. Data rates in optical storage systems as well as in printing are increasing rapidly, requiring highest speed performance of laser diode controllers.

Originally developed for our own dynamic test system VersaTest, and based on more than two years of experience with the violet laser diodes, TOPTICA has developed a new, high performance laser system to fulfil these needs, a system incorporating a high speed laser driver and high quality beam shaping optics to provide a diffraction limited pulsed laser beam.

The unit can deliver output pulse rise and fall times of less than 2,5 ns: due to this short transition time the PVLS is therefore also capable of generating very short pulse down to the 5 ns range. It also incorporates a multi-functional, multi-channel current controller for the violet laser diode in a small rugged enclosure. In addition, the system includes thermal control of the laser diode, an external-cavity power monitor for actively stabilized power and a high bandwidth RF oscillator to obtain low noise cw operation by the generation of mode mixing.