Experimental analysis of the locking and nonlinear regimes in lateral coupled diode lasers

The emission characteristics and the dynamics of laterally coupled diode lasers have been theoretically studied by many authors. However, little experimental work has been done on the locking and nonlinear dynamics of coupled lasers. An experimental characterization of the emission and dynamic characteristics is made by means of the spectrally resolved far field and of the relative intensity noise (RIN) spectrum. It was observed that by varying the bias conditions applied to the device it operates in: (1) locking (lasing both out-of-phase and in-phase lateral modes) or in (2) unlocking. Also it was found that, when the device is lateral locked, several nonlinear and chaotic operation regimes may occur and that the amplitude of the RIN spectrum is highly dependent on the locking conditions. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America