Saturation of light – current characteristics of high-power lasers (λ = 1.0 – 1.1 mm) in pulsed regime

Semiconductor lasers based on MOVPE-grown asymmetric separate-confinement heterostructures with a broadened waveguide and emitting in the wavelength range 1.0 – 1.1 μm are studied. It is found that the intensity of spontaneous emission from the active region increases with increasing pump current above the lasing threshold and that this is caused by a growth in the concentration of charge carriers in the active region due to the modal gain enhancement needed to compensate for the growing internal optical loss at high pulsed pump currents. It is shown that the increase in the internal optical loss with increasing pulsed pump current is one of the main reasons for saturation of the light – current characteristics of high-power semiconductor lasers.