Optical stability of narrow stripe, proton-isolated AlGaAs double heterostructure lasers with gain guiding

Abstract

Optically stable, proton-isolated, gain-guided (AlGa)As double heterostructure injection lasers are described. A narrow stripe width (3.5 μm) and a very shallow implantation are employed (1.3 μm from the active layer); this results in a cosh−2-like optical mode of ∼9.0-μm full width at half-maximum. The far-field profiles possess strong sidelobes at high optical output power. The optical material loss coefficient and the antiguiding parameter are derived from the measured far-field profiles, using the theory of gain guiding. Key parameters in the description of the optical mode distribution are calculated for several values of output power.