High Brightness Single Mode Inhomogeneous Waveguide Edge-Emitting Lasers

Systematic theoretical and experimental investigations of the potential of corrugating the waveguides for increasing the brightness of single mode edge-emitting lasers are presented. By using the Beam Propagation Method (BPM), the losses of the fundamental mode and higher-order modes of such lasers are calculated and compared to the loss of lasers with straight waveguides. The influences of ridge width, etch depth, type of corrugation, and corrugation dimensions are investigated to maximize the brightness. Such lasers are then processed and measured. The experimental results are in agreement with the simulation results. Our results demonstrate that the fundamental mode brightness of corrugated stripe lasers is increased by almost a factor 2 as compared to straight waveguide lasers.