Epitaxial design of ultra high power tunable laser gain section

High power widely tunable lasers are extremely desirable for telecom applications as a replacement for distributed feedback (DFB) lasers in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems, due to their dynamic provision properties. They are also sought after for many other applications, such as phased radar systems, optical switching and routing. This paper introduces novel design ideas and approaches on how to achieve ultra high power in the design of an InGaAsP-InP based widely tunable laser gain section. The inventive ideas are basically composed of two parts. Firstly, to increase the facet optical output power by the inclusion of an InP spacer layer below the ridge and above the multiple quantum wells (MQWs) stack, in order to have extra freedom in the control of widening the single mode ridge width. Secondly, to reduce the free-carrier absorption loss by the inclusion of a bulk balance layer structure below the MQWs stack and above the buffer layer, so as to largely shift the optical mode distribution to the intrinsic and n-doped side of the epilayer structure where the free-carrier absorption loss is lower than that of the p-doped side. Simulation results show that the proposed epilayer designs of the ultra high power gain sections would greatly increase the facet optical output power of a tunable laser, by up to about 80%. It should be noted that these novel epilayer design ideas and approaches developed for the gain section are applicable to the designs of ultra high power DFB lasers and other InGaAsP-InP based lasers.