High power lasers based on antiguided structures

The Antiresonant Reflecting Optical Waveguide (ARROW)-type antiguided lasers have demonstrated stable, single-spatial mode operation up to 500 mW at 980nm and 450 mW at 850 nm. These devices are desirable as pump sources for rare-earth-doped fiber amplifiers and/or fiber-based frequency upconversion. An understanding of the above-threshold mode behaviour in these structures is necessary for an optimal device design. To study these structures, an above-threshold model has been developed including gain spatial hole burning (GSHB) and carrier diffusion, as previously described for antiguided arrays. The study reveals the importance of preferential pumping to the low-index core region, and projects stable, single-mode operation to high powers for 6-10 μm-wide ARROW lasers. The fundamental-mode far-field beamwidth is found to remain virtually constant to 10x threshold ( i.e. no self-focusing)