Dynamics in high-power diode lasers

Abstract

High-power broad-area diode lasers (BALs) exhibit chaotic spatio-temporal dynamics above threshold. Under high power operation, where they emit tens of watts output, large amounts of heat are generated, with significant impact on the laser operation. We incorporate heating effects into a dynamical electro-optical (EO) model for the optical field and carrier dynamics along the quantum-well active zone of the laser. Thereby we effectively couple the EO and heat-transport (HT) solvers. Thermal lensing is included by a thermally-induced contribution to the index profile. The heat sources obtained with the dynamic EO-solver exhibit strong variations on short time scales, which however have only a marginal impact on the temperature distribution. We consider two limits: First, the static HT-problem, with time-averaged heat sources, which is solved iteratively together with the EO solver. Second, under short pulse operation the thermally induced index distribution can be obtained by neglecting heat flow. Although the temperature increase is small, a waveguide is introduced here within a few-ns-long pulse resulting in significant near field narrowing. We further show that a beam propagating in a waveguide structure utilized for BA lasers does not undergo filamentation due to spatial holeburning. Moreover, our results indicate that in BALs a clear optical mode structure is visible which is neither destroyed by the dynamics nor by longitudinal effects.