Beam Properties of 980-nm Tapered Lasers With Separate Contacts: Experiments and Simulations

The beam properties of 980-nm tapered lasers with separate current drives for the ridge waveguide and tapered sections are analyzed by means of a comparison between simulations and experimental results. The simulations are performed with a new model for this type of tapered lasers, providing a good qualitative agreement with experiments. The observed improvement in the beam quality by a stronger pumping of the ridge waveguide section with respect to the tapered section is attributed to the reduction of the backward field intensity. The simulations show that this improvement, far from being a general rule, depends on the details of the device geometry.