A condition of single longitudinal mode operation in injection lasers with index-guiding structure

Abstract

A condition for single longitudinal mode operation (SMO, for short) of index-guided injection lasers is given theoretically and supported by experiment. For SMO, the transverse higher modes must be cut off by using a narrow-width index-guiding waveguide. Inclusion of the spontaneous emission into the lasing field must be reduced by using a thinner active region. In terms of the impurity concentration of the active region, the undoped case is the most stable for temperature variation. A heavily doped active region may also produce SMO. The thermal resistance must be reduced to increase temperature stability. MO with a fixed lasing wavelength is experimentally obtained by temperature control up to an injection current of twice threshold.