Influence of nonlinear effects on the characteristics of pulsed high-power BA DBR lasers

We analyze theoretically the influence of nonlinear effects such as spatial holeburning, 2-photon absorption and gain compression on the power-current and beam characteristics of a high-power broad-area distributed Bragg reflector laser with a stripe width of 50 μm operated in pulsed mode. At high injection currents of up to 100 A spatial holeburning, 2-photon absorption and gain compression not only reduce the output power by more than one half but also lead to a shift of the peaks of the lateral near field from the injection stripe center to the edges thus reducing the beam quality.