Influence of Coulomb screening on lateral lasing in VECSELs.

Parasitic lateral lasing in certain optically pumped semiconductor disc lasers drains the gain of the vertical mode and thus causes power scaling degradation and premature rollover in surface emitting operation. We have observed this effect in both multiple quantum wells (MQW) (GaInAs/GaAs) and double heterostructures (DHS) (GaInP/GaAs/GaInP) under pulsed excitation even when the gain chip lateral dimensions are much larger than the diameter of the pump laser. Lateral lasing occurs persistently between cleaved facets at a band-tail wavelength much longer than the peak of the gain. We show that the effect of bandgap renormalization due to Coulomb screening explains this phenomena. Exploiting the simple analytical plasma theory of bulk semiconductors (Banyai & Koch, 1986), we can account for such an effect in double heterostructures.

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