Analysis of multielement semiconductor lasers

An analysis of laser action in a multielement resonator structure is presented. Resonance wavelengths, threshold gains, energy density distributions, and quality of the modes are obtained from a linear model. A multimode rate equation approach then describes the dynamical behavior and gives absolute values for the modal output. It is shown that structures with only a few active elements can have a high mode selectivity providing single-longitudinal-mode operation of semiconductor lasers under high-frequency current modulation. For example, the suppression of unwanted secondary modes in an eight-element laser can be larger than 23 dB.