Novel high-power and coherent semiconductor laser with a shaped unstable resonator

Salvador Guel-Sandoval, Alan H. Paxton, Swaminathan T. Srinivasan, Shang-Zhu Sun, and Stephen D. Hersee
Center for High Technology Materials, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131

Michael S. Allen and Charles E. Moeller

USAF Phillips Laboratory PL/LIDA, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87117

David J. Gallant
Rockwell Power Systems, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87175

Gregory C. Dente
GCD Associates, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87110

John G. McInerney
University College, Department of Physics, Cork, Ireland

Received 21 March 1994; accepted for publication 30 January 1995 We describe a novel high power semiconductor laser that employs a shaped unstable resonator waveguide to maintain fundamental spatial mode operation at high power levels. We call this device the SHUR shaped unstable resonator laser. By photoetching and regrowth we locate a secondary, nonplanar antiguide, beneath the main part of the waveguide. The lasing mode couples to this secondary guide and experiences lateral antiguiding, which is the basis of the unstable resonator action. Prototype versions of the SHUR laser show a maximum pulsed output power of 770 mW per facet. The focused beam is dominated by a single lobe that contains 47% of the output power. 1995 American Institute of Physics.

High power, coherent laser sources are required for a variety of applications including laser radar, free-space communications, frequency doublers and optical storage. Broad area, single stripe, unstable-resonator semiconductor lasers URSLs have recently emerged as viable alternatives to phased-coupled-arrays for coherent power levels in the 0.11 W range, and appear to have the potential for much higher power levels. Several types of URSL geometry have been demonstrated. Curved laser facets have been formed by polishing,1 etching,2,3 and ion milling.4 Recently URSLs based on the integration of diverging lenses into the laser cavity have been demonstrated.5,6 Here we describe a new URSL structure, the SHUR laser. In this device the lasing mode is shared between primary and secondary regions of a double optical waveguide, where the secondary region acts as a lateral antiguide. Lateral antiguiding is produced by photoetching an approximately parabolic cross-section channel in this secondary waveguide Fig. 1b then using metalorganic chemical vapor deposition MOCVD to ll this channel with a low refractive index material in our case AlGaAs, forming the laser structure shown in Fig. 1c. The shaped channel produces an approximately parabolic change of effective refractive index in the lateral direction. In common with all URSLs, the resulting antiguiding causes higher cavity losses for off axis higher order modes and discriminates in favor of fundamental spatial mode operation.79 MOCVD is used to grow part of the lower cladding region of the laser and this is terminated by a GaAs layer Fig. 1a. A parabolic channel Fig. 1b is then photoetched in this GaAs layer using laser assisted chemical etching described below. After MOCVD regrowth of the rest of the
2048 Appl. Phys. Lett. 66 (16), 17 April 1995

laser structure this channel forms a secondary waveguide with an approximately parabolic lateral variation of effective refractive index Fig. 1c. Photoetching Fig. 2 is achieved using the beam from an Ar laser, which is expanded in the horizontal direction to overll the aperture at S. The separation between L1 and S is adjusted to ensure a full illumination of the aperture. Convex lens L2f21 cm is located one focal distance from the aperture plane, and projects a sinc2 intensity Fourier transform of the slit at a second aperture located at D. The aperture at D transmits the central lobe of the sinc2 pattern. Lens L3f21 cm is located 42 cm from D and along with lens L4 which stretches the image in the vertical direction

FIG. 1. a Epitaxial structure of the SHUR laser. b SHUR laser after rst growth and photoetching. c Final structure of SHUR laser. 1995 American Institute of Physics

0003-6951/95/66(16)/2048/3/$6.00

Downloaded06Mar2009to130.209.6.43.RedistributionsubjecttoAIPlicenseorcopyright;seehttp://apl.aip.org/apl/copyright.jsp

FIG. 2. Optical system used for photoetching. Note: channels are etched perpendicular to plane of the picture.

FIG. 3. Power vs current plot of the SHUR laser.

projects a vertical line onto the GaAs sample located at C. The approximately parabolic lateral intensity distribution of the vertical line is converted to a parabolic etch depth variation using a photoetch solution consisting of nitric acid diluted by 10 parts volume of water. This solution etches GaAs at rates of approximately 100200 /min, when illuminated by an argon laser 488 nm line, at a power density of 300 600 mW/cm2 at the etching plane. This etching results in a channel prole which is almost parabolic except near its edges.10 For a more detailed description of laser-assisted chemical etchings, see Refs. 11 and 12. Increasing the depth of the photoetched channel increases the index variation and therefore the antiguiding, causing a stronger divergence of the lasing mode. Thus we can adjust the lateral radius of curvature of the mode wave front and therefore the cavity magnication by changing the basic etching parameters, i.e., the depth and width of the etched channel. The width of the channel is conveniently changed by adjusting the width of the aperture S shown in Fig. 2. Care must be taken when using this double optical waveguide, to avoid too strong a coupling to the secondary waveguide, which could cause higher order transverse modes to be supported and thereby degrade the laser coherence. Furthermore, as there is no gain in the secondary waveguide the laser efciency decreases as more of the mode overlaps the secondary waveguide. To avoid these problems we have modeled mode propagation in this double waveguide structure. The full theoretical basis of the SHUR laser is described in Ref. 13. The structure shown in Fig. 1 uses the results of this theoretical study, which predicts that the channel depth shown here, i.e., 1000 will support only the fundamental transverse mode. The effective index step between the center and edge of the laser stripe is approximately 0.04, which we calculate will produce a round trip mode magnication of 4.44 for a 500 m long cavity. The nal laser chip and full epitaxial structure are shown in Fig. 1c. The laser chip length was 500 m and the laser stripe width was 140 m. These lasers were characterized under pulsed operation, using a pulse duration of 1 s at a 10 kHz repetition rate. Figure 3 shows the power output from one facet as a function of drive current. In common with other URSL devices, antiguiding increases the threshold current density. In this case the threshold was 2 kA/cm2. The maximum power was 1.54 W 770 mW per facet at a current of 2.9 with a slope
Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 66, No. 16, 17 April 1995

efciency of 33% per facet. The focused output of these devices Fig. 4 shows a strong central lobe containing 740 mW 370 mW per facet of the output power. The full width at half-maximum of the lobe, at the virtual-source image plane, was 133 m. This value is approximately twice that expected for a perfectly coherent device 69 m, assuming a near eld width of 140 m, and remains constant over the current range 1.52.9 A. This result represents a large amount of coherent power from a single stripe laser. In some SHUR lasers the far eld also showed a second less intense lobe not shown that was correlated with an intense region on one side of the near eld region. This resulted from making the laser contact stripe too wide by comparison with the photoetched channel and from a small misalignment between the laser stripe and the channel. As we described above, the approximation to a parabolic lateral index variation is only valid near the center of the channel. At the channel edge the antiguide becomes a positive guide, which can maintain an intense lament that will generally have a different phase to the main output. We have corrected this problem by reducing the stripe width relative to the channel, and these corrected devices show only one far eld lobe. We have demonstrated the operation of a novel URSL, the SHUR laser, which has potential for high-power, coher-

FIG. 4. The focused beam plot of the SHUR laser. The FWHM of the main lobe was 133 m at the virtual-source image plane. This lobe width FWHM is approximately twice that expected for a perfectly coherent device 69 m having a near eld width of 140 m. Guel-Sandoval et al. 2049

Downloaded06Mar2009to130.209.6.43.RedistributionsubjecttoAIPlicenseorcopyright;seehttp://apl.aip.org/apl/copyright.jsp

ent applications. The structure is fabricated using photoetching and MOCVD regrowth and incorporates a shaped optical waveguide that provides the lateral antiguiding necessary for unstable resonator action. Prototype versions of the SHUR laser have shown up to 1.54 W total pulsed output of which 740 mW is highly coherent. This work was partially supported by the U. S. Air Force Phillips Laboratory. The authors also wish to thank Don L. Kendall CHTM, University of New Mexico and Graciela Guel Microphase Labs for useful discussion.
1

A. P. Bogatov, P. G. Eliseev, M. A. Manko, G. T. Mikaelyan, and Yu. M. Popov, Sov. J. Quantum Electron. 10, 5 1980. 2 R. R. Craig, L. W. Casperson, O. M. Stafsudd, J. J. Yang, G. A. Evans, R. A. Evans, and R. A. Davidheiser, Electron. Lett. 21, 62 1985. 3 J. Salzman, T. Vankatesan, R. Lang, M. Mittelstein, and A. Yariv, Appl. Phys. Lett. Phys. Lett. 46, 218 1985.

M. L. Tilton, G. C. Dente, A. H. Paxton, J. Cser, R. K. DeFreez, C. E. Moeller, and D. Depatie, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. QE-27, 2098 1991. 5 S. Nakatsuka and K. Tatsuno, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 28, L1003 1989. 6 S. Srinivasan, C. Schaus, S. Z. Sun, E. Armour, S. D. Hersee, J. G. McInerney, A. Paxton, and D. Gallant, Appl. Phys. Lett. 61, 1272 1992. 7 A. K. Chan, C. P. Lai, and H. F. Taylor, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. QE-24, 489 1988. 8 J. P. Hohimer, G. R. Hadley, and A. Owyoung, Appl. Phys. Lett. 52, 260 1988. 9 M. L. Tilton, G. C. Dente, and A. H. Paxton, SPIE Proc. 1219, 923 1990. 10 M. S. Allen, S. Guel-Sandoval, and J. G. McInerney, SPIE Proc. 1634, 420 1992. 11 J. Van de Ven and H. J. P. Nabben, J. Electrochem. Soc. 137, 5 1990. 12 D. V. Podlesnik and H. H. Gilgen, in Laser Chemical Processing for Microelectronics Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. 13 A. H. Paxton, C. F. Schaus, and S. T. Srinivasan, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. QE-29, 2784 1993.

2050

Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 66, No. 16, 17 April 1995

Guel-Sandoval et al.

Downloaded06Mar2009to130.209.6.43.RedistributionsubjecttoAIPlicenseorcopyright;seehttp://apl.aip.org/apl/copyright.jsp