NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF BROAD-AREA HIGH-POWER SEMICONDUCTOR-LASER AMPLIFIERS

A comprehensive model is presented to study the electrical, thermal, a nd optical behavior of broad-area traveling-wave semiconductor amplifi ers, Finite-element thermal analysis and carrier transport mechanisms are integrated into the beam propagation method to include thermal len sing and optically induced nonlinearities, A self-consistent iteration is developed to simulate the beam filamentation in broad-area semicon ductor amplifiers with residual facet reflectivities. The experimental ly observed periodic filamentation with intensity minima close to zero is investigated numerically.