Asymmetric-waveguide, short cavity designs with a bulk active layer for high pulsed power eye-safe spectral range laser diodes

Abstract

It is shown, by calculations calibrated against the authors' recent experimental data, that an eye-safe wavelength range InGaAsP/InP high pulsed power laser design using a bulk active layer, which has a large refractive index step with respect to the optical confinement layer and is located close to the p-cladding, can provide substantial performance improvement compared to the best results achieved so far for this operating regime and wavelength. The dependence of the laser performance on the design parameters such as the thicknesses of the active layer and the waveguide, as well as the cavity length, are analysed. It is shown that the relatively thick bulk active layer in such InGaAsP/InP lasers allows the use of short cavity lengths (∼1 mm or even shorter), for achieving high pulsed power while maintaining a low p-cladding series resistance (making for high efficiency) and a narrow far field (making for high brightness). A single-asymmetry structure with the asymmetric active layer location but symmetric optical confinement layer/cladding refractive index steps gives performance only marginally inferior to that of a double-asymmetric one including asymmetric refractive index steps.