Abstract

The space-time dynamical behaviour of multi-stripe index/gain guided semiconductor laser arrays and broad area lasers is studied using the coupled Maxwell Semiconductor Bloch equations which include transverse diffraction of the counterpropagating optical fields and many-body effects between the carriers in the active medium. Our results confirm that evanescently coupled multi-stripe and broad area lasers are a fascinating manifestation of spatio-temporal complexity in spatially extended nonlinear systems. Stabilization of the laser output can be achieved by injection-locking the array with a weak external injected signal. The broad area laser shows random intensity filamentation in free-running mode and can be stablized to produce high power output by using an unstable resonator configuration for transverse mode discrimination. A direct comparison is made with phenomenological theories and one of our main conclusions is that these theories can be salvaged in strongly index-guided multistripe structures by appealing to microscopic many-body semiconductor theory to provide the fundamental problem parameters. We note marked differences in predictions of both theories for gain guided structures.

© 1992 Optical Society of America