FUNDAMENTAL MODE-OPERATION OF HIGH-POWER INGAAS GAAS/ALGAAS LASER ARRAYS/

A new ridge waveguide laser array with stable fundamental mode operati on has been fabricated. By introducing absorption regions in all the l aser stripes except for the central one, the electric field distributi on of the laser arrays and the modal gains of the array supermodes are changed, resulting in fundamental mode operation. The threshold curre nt of an array with five elements is typically 40 mA and the maximum o utput power is higher than 150 mW. The single-lobed far-field pattern centered at 0-degrees with full width at half maximum of 2-degrees is obtained at 1.5 times of the threshold current (I(th)).