Stabilization of lateral mode transients in high-power broad area semiconductor lasers
C. Chen1, P. Leisher2, S. Patterson2, P. Crump3, Y.K. Kim4 and K. Choquette1
Published in:
Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 94, no. 011107 (2009).
Abstract:
The lateral modes in high-power broad area gain-guided semiconductor lasers suffer from instabilities that can lead to self-focusing of the optical modes resulting in the formation of beam filaments. The introduction of cold-cavity index guiding, by means of etched holes, has been previously shown to reduce filament formation in the optical near field. In this work, a simple measurement technique is presented and utilized to characterize the behavior of local intensity fluctuations in the time domain. The use of etched holes to provide index guiding is shown to provide a significant improvement in the temporal stability of the lateral optical modes.
1 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 208 N. Wright St., Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
2 nLight Corporation, 5408 NE 88th St., Bldg. E, Vancouver, Washington 98665, USA
3 Ferdinand-Braun-Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik, Gustav-Kirchhoff-Straße 4, D-12489 Berlin, Germany
4 Intel Corporation, 2200 Mission College Blvd., Santa Clara, California 95054, USA
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