How to enhance a room-temperature operation of diode lasers and their arrays

Abstract

A key problem to be solved during designing productive diode lasers and their lasing arrays is their proper thermal management enabling efficient high-power operation. Strictly speaking, the above demand leads to optimization of their structures to enhance lasing performance for high operation currents. It is well-known that deterioration of laser performance is mostly induced by excessive temperature increases within their volumes. In diode-laser arrays, additionally thermal crosstalk between array emitters should be taken into account. In the present paper, physics of heat-flux generation within the laser-diode volume and its extraction from it is analysed and described with the aid of our self-consistent simulation procedure. Then their thermal optimization is discussed including a proper design of a heat-flux generation within the laser volume, enhancement of its transport towards a laser heat-sink and, additionally in laser arrays, reduction of a thermal crosstalk between individual array emitters. The analysis is carried out using modern nitride edge-emitting ridge-waveguide lasers and their one-dimensional arrays as well as arsenide semiconductor disk lasers as typical examples of modern diode-laser designs. Physical processes responsible for heat-flux generation within these devices and heat-flux extraction from their volumes are analysed and an impact of some construction details on these processes is explained