High-power highly reliable 980-nm pump laser diodes

The 980-nm InGaAs strained quantum-well lasers hold promise as pumping light sources for Er/sup 3+/-doped fiber amplifiers. However, the lifetime of these lasers is limited by internal dark line defects (DLDs) and catastrophic optical damage (COD) at facets. In this paper, we focus on the degradation mechanisms of DLD and COD failures and verify that these types of failure do not occur within 300,000 hours at 100-mW output power through accelerated aging tests at various temperatures and light output powers.