High power laterally antiguided semiconductor light source with reduced transverse optical confinement

Abstract

A semiconductor structure for use as a laser or amplifier has a multilayer structure including a substrate, an active region, optical confinement and cladding layers on each side of the active region to surround the active region. The structure includes at least one core element at which light emission occurs and interelement regions laterally adjacent to the core element with the effective refractive index of the interelement regions higher than that of the core element to provide antiguiding of light emitted in the core element. The optical confinement and cladding layers on opposite sides of the active region have different indexes of refraction to provide an optical waveguiding structure in the transverse direction in the core element which is asymmetrical and which favors lasing only in the fundamental transverse mode. The structure allows larger core elements to be utilized than otherwise possible and results in a significantly increased light emission spot size enabling much higher emission power levels for lasers and higher saturation power levels for amplifiers.

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