Slab-Coupled Semiconductor Lasers with Single-Spatial, Large-Diameter Mode

A high-brightness semiconductor diode laser design, which utilizes a slab-coupled optical waveguide region to achieve several potentially important advances in performance, is described and experimentally demonstrated using simple rib waveguide quantum well structures. These lasers operate in a large, low-aspect-ratio, lowest-order spatial mode, which can be butt coupled to a single-mode fiber with very high coupling efficiency. The acronym used for this new type of structure is SCOWL, taken from "slab-coupled optical waveguide laser". Initial results on 1.3μmm InGaAsP/InP and 980-nm AlGaAs/InGaAs SCOWLs are presented.