Simulations and analysis of beam quality improvement in spatially modulated broad area edge-emitting devices

Abstract

We simulate and analyze how beam quality improves while being amplified in edge emitting broad area semiconductor amplifiers with a periodic structuring of the electrical contacts, in both longitudinal and lateral directions. A spatio-temporal traveling wave model is used for simulations of the dynamics and nonlinear interactions of the optical fields, induced polarizations and carrier density. In the case of small beam amplification, the optical field can be expanded into few Bloch modes, so that the system is described by a set of ODEs for the evolution of the mode amplitudes. The analysis of such model provides a deep understanding of the impact of the different parameters on amplification and on spatial (angular) filtering of the beam. It is shown that under realistic parameters the twodimensional modulation of the current can lead not only to a significant reduction of the emission divergence, but also to an additional amplification of the emitted field.