Efficient coupling of electro-optical and heat-transport models for broad-area semiconductor lasers

Abstract

In this work, we discuss the modeling of edge-emitting high-power broad-area semiconductor lasers. We demonstrate an efficient iterative coupling of a slow heat transport (HT) model defined on multiple vertical-lateral laser cross-sections with a fast dynamic electro-optical (EO) model determined on the longitudinal-lateral domain that is a projection of the device to the active region of the laser. Whereas the HT-solver calculates temperature and thermally-induced refractive index changes, the EO-solver exploits these distributions and provides time-averaged field intensities, quasi-Fermi potentials, and carrier densities. All these time-averaged distributions are used repetitively by the HT-solver for the generation of the heat sources entering the HT problem solved in the next iteration step.