High-power, picosecond pulse generation from surface implanted InGaAsP/InP ( lambda =1.53 mu m) laser diodes

As already shown by previous studies, heavy ion implantation can produce a saturable absorber region and, when implemented into a laser resonator, enables the generation of short optical pulses in the picosecond regime. Recently, the feasibility of surface (masked) implantation was demonstrated on strained quantum well InGaAs/GaAs lasers. We present on-wafer fabrication of short pulse lasers on the InGaAsP/InP basis with saturable absorbers created with masked heavy ion implantation. We demonstrate that by using this cost-effective technique high-power (>1 W) picosecond pulse generation is achievable.