Abstract

Facet temperature rise is believed to play an important role in the degradation of semiconductor lasers. In this paper the facet temperature and output power of uncoated AlGaAs single quantum well lasers operated at constant current were measured as a function of time until catastrophic breakdown. The temperature rise is observed to consist of two regimes: an initial linear temperature rise accompanied by a gradual power degradation followed by a rapid nonlinear temperature rise at what appears to be a critical temperature leading to catastrophic optical damage (COD).

© 1991 Optical Society of America