Rapid stress-testing vs. long-term aging: a case study of 980-nm emitting single-spatial mode lasers

The degradation behaviors of 980-nm emitting nominally identical single-spatial mode lasers are studied during continuous wave long-term operation and during single-pulse stress tests. Both tests activate internal catastrophic optical damage as sudden degradation mechanism limiting the device lifetime. In case of high power stress-testing, the mechanism that initializes this effect is a spatial widening of the optical mode, resulting in increased absorption outside the waveguide. A similar disturbance to the optical mode is caused by defects that are generated during long-term operation. Thus two very different aging regimes eventually result in the same degradation scenario. We find that single-pulse stress-testing allows for activation of several degradation mechanisms in a device one after the other. Moreover, it becomes possible to distinguish between effects induced by gradual degradation and such that are independent on operation time. Thus stress-testing is considered a complementary tool, which might pave the way towards more economic device testing.