Chirped coupled ridge waveguide quantum cascade laser arrays with stable single-lobe far-field patterns

Abstract

Power scaling in a broad area quantum cascade laser (QCL) tends to deteriorate beam quality with the emission of a multiple-lobe far-field pattern. In this paper, we demonstrate a coupled ridge waveguide QCL array consisting of five elements with chirped geometry. In-phase mode operation is secured by managing supermode loss with properly designed geometries of ridges. A single-lobe lateral far-field with a near diffraction limited beam pattern was obtained in the whole current dynamic range. The devices were fabricated with the wet and dry etching method. The regrowth technique of the InP:Fe insulation layer and InP:Si waveguide layer was employed. Such a structure has the potential to optimize the beam quality of the recently reported high-power broad-area QCL with a reduced cascade number.