Spectral delay algebraic equation approach to broad area laser diodes

Abstract

In this work, we discuss an efficient modeling approach for the simulation of Broad Area Laser Diodes. Our method is based on the analytical solution in the spectral domain of the paraxial wave equations for the forward and backward slowly varying traveling waves. We show how to extend to the lateral dimension and to the influence of diffractive terms the idea of mesh decimation by recasting traveling wave models into coupled delay algebraic equations, as discussed in [1]. We compare the results of the dynamics obtained with our improved model with the results of a standard traveling wave description in the cases of straight current stripes as well as in the important configuration of high power tapered anti-reflection coated devices. We obtain an excellent agreement and an improvement of the integration time between one and two orders of magnitudes which may alleviate the necessity of using complex parallel codes. We discussed how the method can be further improved to other, more refined descriptions of the active medium and to the inclusion of thermal effects.