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Modal Properties And Spontaneous Emission Factor In Unstable-Resonator Semiconductor Lasers, Gang Yao

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An experimental study has been carried out on the spectral, modal, and dynamical properties of a monolithic unstable-resonator semiconductor laser. Due to the large loss and the non-power-orthogonal nature of the transverse and longitudinal modes in the unstable resonator, the spontaneous emission factor, defined as the ratio of the power of the spontaneous emission entering the lasing mode to the total power of the spontaneous emission, is much larger than that of a regular Fabry-Perot cavity of the same dimension. The large spontaneous emission factor has profound effects on the lasing properties. For a 100-{dollar}\mu{dollar}m-wide and 500-{dollar}\mu{dollar}m-long stripe-geometry unstable resonator …