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Spatio-temporal dynamics of gain-guided semiconductor laser arrays

Martin-Regalado, J.; Balle, S.; Abraham, N. B.
IEEE J. of Quantum Electron. 32(2), 257-266 (1996)

A continuous model based on the coupled field-matter Maxwell-Bloch
equations for a two-level homogeneously broadened single mode laser
is developed. The model includes a Langevin formulation to model
thermal and spontaneous emission noises and accounts for carrier
diffusion, optical field diffraction and current spreading. Our
model is flexible enough to simulate any gain-guided longitudinally
uniform laser geometry and is applied to both a single-stripe and a
four-stripe gain-guided semiconductor lasers where the influence
of the injection current, the interstripe distance and carrier
diffusion is discussed within the context of the laser dynamics. We
show that an array operating with quasi-independent stripes may be
achieved at low pumps and larger interstripe distances. However as
injection current is increased or the interstripe distance is
decreased, the device passes through a variety of dynamical
instabilities which can be analyzed in the context of lateral cavity
modes. Moreover, we also show that the array dynamics is strongly
influenced by carrier diffusion which may also lead to different
thresholds for each element of the array.

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