Measurement of the effect of injected carriers on the <i>p</i> - <i>n</i> refractive-index step in single heterostructure diode lasers

Abstract

Far-field emission patterns of GaAs/GaxAl1-x As single heterostructure lasers have been measured over a range of temperature and threshold currents. The pattern width decreases as the threshold increases, which can be interpreted as a reduction of the p-n refractive-index step, owing to the effect of the injected carriers. A quantitative estimate of this effect has been obtained.