Improved beam quality for high-power tapered laser diodes with LMG (low-modal-gain) epitaxial layer structures

Michael Mikulla; Alexis Schmitt; Pierre Chazan; A. Wetzel; Martin Walther; Rudolf Kiefer; Wilfried Pletschen; Juergen Braunstein; Guenter Weimann

doi:10.1117/12.304433

7 April 1998 Improved beam quality for high-power tapered laser diodes with LMG (low-modal-gain) epitaxial layer structures

Michael Mikulla, Alexis Schmitt, Pierre Chazan, A. Wetzel, Martin Walther, Rudolf Kiefer, Wilfried Pletschen, Juergen Braunstein, Guenter Weimann

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 3284, In-Plane Semiconductor Lasers: from Ultraviolet to Mid-Infrared II; (1998) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.304433
Event: Optoelectronics and High-Power Lasers and Applications, 1998, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

In high-power, high-brightness laser diodes, beam filamentation is one of the main physical effects that limit the device performance. Due to the interaction between the optical power and the carrier density in the active region of broad area devices, spatial hole-burning leads to an inhomogeneous optical index that causes the degradation of the optical beam profile. We show, that epitaxial layer structures with low optical confinement are much more insensitive to beam filamentation because of their reduced differential gain. Experimentally we find, that the beam quality of tapered laser oscillators can be improved by an order of magnitude, when epitaxial layer structures with reduced modal gain are used for the device fabrication. Two mm long tapered devices with a 200 micrometer wide output facet show near diffraction limited farfield profiles up to output powers of more than 2 W cw.

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Michael Mikulla, Alexis Schmitt, Pierre Chazan, A. Wetzel, Martin Walther, Rudolf Kiefer, Wilfried Pletschen, Juergen Braunstein, and Guenter Weimann "Improved beam quality for high-power tapered laser diodes with LMG (low-modal-gain) epitaxial layer structures", Proc. SPIE 3284, In-Plane Semiconductor Lasers: from Ultraviolet to Mid-Infrared II, (7 April 1998); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.304433

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