Luyang Wang, Salmaan Baxamusa, Robert Deri, Elaine McVay, William Fenwick, Jack Kotovsky, Mark Crowley, Jiyon Song, Gerald Thaler, Adam Dusty, Christopher Schuck, Kevin Pipe
Using a high sensitivity infrared camera, we image the optical cavity of an operating high-power diode laser through a window etched in the substrate and observe weak IR emission from the waveguide core region. The IR intensity maps show dark spots in the cavity that subsequently grow into line defects (all oriented in the same direction) as the laser ages. This technique holds promise as a nondestructive, in situ approach to study the formation and evolution of defects in an operating device. We also use CCD-based thermoreflectance to generate high-resolution facet temperature profiles of the same lasers during aging, with the results suggesting that the slow degradation of optical power that occurs prior to laser failure relates more to cavity defect formation than facet defect (hotspot) formation.
The effect of oxygen defects on the gradual degradation rates of power and nonradiative carrier recombination in ~800 nm laser diodes was studied experimentally. While intentional introduction of oxygen at low levels (<5×10^15 cm^-3) was observed to degrade lasing performance prior to aging, no variation in gradual degradation rate of lasing power was observed. This suggests that degradation in these devices is not due to nonradiative recombination at low levels of point defects. Simulation of our data indicates that the power degradation may arise from increased intracavity absorption.
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