Mode beating in tapered high-power deeply-etched semiconductor amplifiers

摘要

The evolution of the optical beam profile along a high-power tapered semiconductor amplifier has been demonstrated by using a rigorous finite element-based and full-vectorial modal approach, coupled with the beam propagation method. Numerically simulated results indicate that many higher order modes are generated and propagate along the tapered structure and their interference with the fundamental mode causes variations of the optical beam, both along the transverse and the axial directions, which significantly modifies the output beam quality.