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Design and technology developments targeted at increasing both power conversion efficiency and optical output power of GaAs-based diode lasers are under intense study worldwide, driven by the demands of commercial laser systems. The conversion efficiency at the operation point is known to be limited by electrical and optical losses in the p-side waveguide. In this paper an 'extreme, double asymmetric' design to mitigate the impact of the p-side waveguide is studied and compared with a more conventional design. An increase of the efficiency at the highest power is demonstrated, but it is less than expected from simulations.

GaAs-based broad-area diode lasers are needed with improved lateral beam parameter product (BPPlat) at high power. An experimental study of the factors limiting BPPlat is therefore presented, using extreme double-asymmetric (EDAS) vertical structures emitting at 910 nm. Continuous wave, pulsed and polarization-resolved measurements are presented and compared to thermal simulation. The importance of thermal and packaging-induced effects is determined by comparing junction -up and -down devices. Process factors are clarified by comparing diodes with and without index-guiding trenches. We show that in all cases studied, BPPlat is limited by a non-thermal BPP ground-level and a thermal BPP, which depends linearly on self-heating. Measurements as a function of pulse width confirm that self-heating rather than bias-level dominates. Diodes without trenches show low BPP ground-level, and a thermal BPP which depends strongly on mounting, due to changes in the temperature profile. The additional lateral guiding in diodes with trenches strongly increases the BPP ground-level, but optically isolates the stripe from the device edges, suppressing the influence of the thermal profile, leading to a BPP-slope that is low and independent of mounting. Trenches are also shown to initiate strain fields that cause parasitic TM-polarized emission with large BPPlat, whose influence on total BPPlat remains small, provided the overall polarization purity is >95%.

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For maximum fibre-coupled power, high power broad area diode lasers must operate with small lateral far field angles at high continuous wave (CW) powers. However, these structures are laterally multi-moded, with low beam quality and wide emission angles. In order to experimentally determine the origin of the low beam quality, spectrally resolved near and far field measurements were performed for a diode laser with 50 μm stripe width. Within the range measured (CW optical output powers to 1.5 W) the laser is shown to operate in just six stable lateral modes, with spatially periodic profiles. Comparisons of the measured profiles with the results of two-dimensional modal simulation demonstrate that current-induced thermal lensing dominates the lateral waveguiding, in spite of the presence of both strong built-in index guiding and gain guiding. No evidence is seen for filamentation. Building on the diagnosis, proposals are presented for improvements to beam quality.

We report on the growth by molecular beam epitaxy of modulation-doped GaAs-(Ga,Al)As heterostructures with low-temperature hole mobility exceeding 1.2×106 cm2 V−1 s−1 with carrier concentrations as low as 0.8×1011 cm−2: The highest value observed at such low densities. We also report the first observation of persistent positive photoconductivity in a two-dimensional hole gas. An analysis of the number density and temperature dependence of the mobility leads us to conclude that the mobility is limited by phonon scattering above ∼4 K and interface scattering at lower temperatures.