Injection locking of an index-guided semiconductor laser array

This paper describes an analysis of the effects of an injected laser field on an index-guided semiconductor laser array. An injected field that is resonant with the lowest order array mode and a free-running array that is either operating with a higher order array mode or is not frequency locked are assumed. For both cases, a sufficiently intense injected field is found to cause the array to operate predominantly in the lowest order mode. Also, according to the analysis, for certain array configurations, it is more advantageous to have the injected field present during the startup of oscillation than to introduce it after the free-running array has reached steady state. Finally, the injection-locked array is found to contain a tilt in the output beam.