Two photon absorption in high power broad area laser diodes

Abstract

Recent advances in thermal management and improvements in fabrication and facet passivation enabled extracting unprecedented optical powers from laser diodes (LDs). However, even in the absence of thermal roll-over or catastrophic optical damage (COD), the maximum achievable power is limited by optical non-linear effects. Due to its non-linear nature, two-photon absorption (TPA) becomes one of the dominant factors that limit efficient extraction of laser power from LDs. In this paper, theoretical and experimental analysis of TPA in high-power broad area laser diodes (BALD) is presented. A phenomenological optical extraction model that incorporates TPA explains the reduction in optical extraction efficiency at high intensities in BALD bars with 100μm-wide emitters. The model includes two contributions associated with TPA: the straightforward absorption of laser photons and the subsequent single photon absorption by the holes and electrons generated by the TPA process. TPA is a fundamental limitation since it is inherent to the LD semiconductor material. Therefore scaling the LDs to high power requires designs that reduce the optical intensity by increasing the mode size.