Modeling the nonlinear dynamics of wide aperture semiconductor lasers and amplifiers

Issues relating to modeling the full spatiotemporal dynamics of wide aperture semiconductor lasers and amplifiers are discussed. Included in the discussion are the limitations of the usual beam propagation approach, characteristics of the many-body light- semiconductor material interaction, spurious nonphysical instabilities which mimic numerical grid oscillations and novel subpicosecond pulse reshaping and compression effects. An explicit simulation is presented for a flared amplifier structure and the results are compared with those using a linear gain model.