Modeling high-power semiconductor lasers: from microscopic physics to device applications

A robust, modular and comprehensive simulation model, built on a first-principles microscopic physics basis, includes the fully time-dependent and spatially resolved internal optical, carrier and temperature fields within an arbitrary geometry edge-emitting high-power semiconductor laser device. The simulator is designed to run interactively on a multi- processor shared memory graphical supercomputer by utilizing a highly efficient algorithm running in parallel over multiple CPUs. The experimentally validated semiconductor optical response is computed using a microscopic approach that includes the relevant bandstructure of the Quantum Well and confining barrier regions together with a fully quantum mechanical many-body calculation that takes all occupied bands into account. The latter quantity is introduced into the simulator via a multidimensional look-up table that captures the local dependence of the gain and refractive index of the structure over a broad range of frequencies and carrier densities. The simulator is designed in a modular form so as to be able to include differing device geometries (broad area, flared, multiple contacts, arrays, ..), filters (DBR or DFB grating sections), index/gain-guiding, temperature and current profiles and so on. Results will be presented for both broad area and MOPA devices.